


Five Times Hanzo Shimada Lost His Composure

by leoandlancer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 5 Times, Awkward Flirting, Blood and Torture, Everything's fine though I promise, Fake Dating, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Flustered Hanzo, Gratuitous McCree, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Mutual Pining, Protectiveness, Stuck in the Rain, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: When Hanzo first arrived at the Watchpoint, he wasn't expecting anything like Jesse McCree. Already shouldering the responsibility of pursuing his redemption, and trying to reconnect with Genji,  Hanzo is determined to make his new arrangement a success. However, the gunslinger has an irritatingly thoughtless way of making Hanzo loose his composure.(Five Times + One fic of Hanzo increasingly loosing his cool over all the little things that come easily to McCree because help me I need more fluff.)





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> Written while I was working on a fic for the McHanzo Big Bang, and needed them to be cute. I hope you enjoy!  
> (Updates, Feb 2, Feb 13, Feb 16, Feb 27, Mar 2)  
> The amazing [sksninja](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/) has made this work into a podfic! [Check it out!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his/)

The first time Hanzo Shimada laid eyes on Jesse McCree, he was fairly certain there was a joke somewhere he wasn't getting.

"Well, hey there."

The american was tall and big, in the way people got when they spend a lot of time outdoors, in a pragmatic way that made him look comfortable in his own skin. Familiar with his abilities. He was shaggy and unkempt and up close he smelled like smoke and sage and warm wool. His voice was low and his smile looked real. The hand he held out to Hanzo was big and when Hanzo shook it, the grip was firm but not threatening.

"Name's McCree, Jesse McCree. I'm the gunslinger here. Nice to meet you."

Jesse McCree tipped his hat with a practiced gesture too smooth to be an affectation. It was his genuine greeting and Hanzo was a little taken aback by how easy it came to the big man before him. How natural it looked on him.

"Genji mentioned you might be joining our little organization," McCree went on.

Hanzo stiffened, waiting for the questions, the accusations, the  _ how could you kill your brother _ hissed at him like he'd been hissing at himself all these years.

"Real good of you to join us, we need skills like the ones you're bringing. Looking forward to getting acquainted, archer." McCree's bright eyes in the shade of his hat weren't scared to meet Hanzo's flat, hostile gaze. He smiled right down into him, slow and easy.

The man was dressed like a cowboy and had a substantial bounty on his head. He was a gunslinger who could simultaneously kill any number of people with a six shooter. He wore serapes with holes at the hem and only shaved on Fridays if he remembered and his belt buckle was an honest to god self describing acronym. Hanzo had traveled the world for almost twelve years; never settling, constantly on the move, constantly looking for something, anything, worth while.

In all that time, he had never encountered anything that could have prepared him for Jesse McCree.

"Why would he wear such a thing," Hanzo said, hours later. It was dark outside, and the moon was high up and bright overhead. He was kneeling with his bow at his side, and the half Omnic creature with his brothers voice had asked to sit near him. It was the first time either of them had broken the silence in over an hour.

"McCree? He's had the hat as long as I've known him," Genji replied.

Hanzo didn't count the hat as even a ping on the scale of weird things about Jesse McCree. There was too much about the man to start at headwear. "The belt buckle."

Genji made a noise that might have been a snort. It was so brief, and so familiar, that Hanzo thought he'd imagined it, and felt the loss of his brother thud into him again, a familiar pain. Without intending to, he turned and looked at the sleek, alien creation of carbon fibre and metal and green light.

"The belt buckle he earned," Genji said, his mask turned a little towards Hanzo, maybe meeting his gaze. 

The voice was amused, and achingly familiar. Hanzo couldn't help but feel simultaneously relieved and wrathful at hearing it again. All the agony of the years he'd spent in exile meant nothing if Genji was truly alive.

Hanzo couldn't make any reply, so they lapsed again into the silence. Sitting side by side, no one would have guessed they had been brothers. They had looked alike when they were boys.

"He doesn't deserve any unkindness," Genji said after a pause of almost a quarter hour.

Hanzo just shook his head. Either in agreement or in denial that he'd had anything like unkindness planned. He didn't know what to do with the gunslinger, but unkindness hadn't occurred to him. What  _ had  _ occurred to Hanzo about the gunslinger was far more troubling. And unusual for him.

"Hanzo," Genji said, and there was a warning tone that Hanzo had never heard before. 

Genji had never taken a stand in his memory, not until the end anyway. He'd been a master at evasion and deflection, rarely ever getting pinned down and preferring to flow around the rigid rules of his family. Hanzo didn’t know how to deal with Genji taking a stand. The last time he’d tried, it wasn’t exactly an unprecedented success for either of them.

"Has he been a friend to you?" Hanzo fought his way through the question. It was perilously close to asking Genji how he'd been all the years Hanzo had thought he was dead. Hanzo had heard enough to get a rough idea of what Genji had done in that decade. He couldn't face it.

"Yes," Genji answered without hesitation. "Better than I deserved."

Hanzo nodded. Genji had never had friends in the old days. He had adored his big brother. He had lorded over or bullied his peers. He'd had lovers and conquests in the form of any human imaginable. But if Jesse McCree had been his friend, then that meant a great deal.

"Unkindness was never my intention," Hanzo said quietly.

Genji didn't point out that Hanzo's intentions weren't always well meant. Or that a lack of unkindness from Hanzo wasn't necessarily equal to a kindness. 

"He is worthy of respect, brother," Genji said instead.

"We shall see," Hanzo replied.

They sat in silence for another hour. Genji sat with the grace and immobile elegance their strictest childhood teacher could never have dreamed of. Hanzo knelt with his eyes shut and his hands loose on his thighs. He tried to think, ne needed to plan. There were things he had to do here, changes in his life, an end to traveling, an end to running. The cavity in his life that he'd carved himself and then build a lifestyle around was sitting immobile beside him. Hanzo was trying not to founder in this new chaotic imbalance.

He needed to quiet his mind. He needed to process it. He needed to be still.

He could force his body to be still, but his mind wasn't. He found himself  thinking of shaggy brown hair and the kind, direct stare, the low voice and the big hand that had shaken his. The little bow McCree had made. The sweetly thoughtless hat tip. The causal complement and the lazy, genuine smile on the wide, generous mouth. Hanzo's hands closed into fists and he took a breath.

He would not allow distractions. He had lived for ten years without companions, it had made him stronger. He wouldn't change that now. He had to be of use to this new organization Genji was pledged to. He had to stay, had to find if his brother really did draw breath inside the machine beside him. He had to show his skill were of use to the others here. 

He had his composure to maintain.

Unkindness wasn't his intention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for checking this out!! Next chapter out on Thursday, Feb 2. I post regularly on Mondays, next week with be chapter 2 of my Roadrat Mermaid AU! I hope you enjoyed this (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶  
> This chapter is unbeta'd, so all the horribly embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes are mine, and I apologize.  
> ...  
> A podfic by sksninja can be found [here!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his)


	2. A Near Death Experience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for checking this out! Hope you enjoy some gratuitous McCree~

The first time Hanzo lost his composure, it very nearly killed him.

Hanzo had been trained to be a warrior from the cradle. He had never swayed from his calling, nor had he ever questioned it growing up. Even to his ruin, he had never shied from his duty. He had faced terrible opponents and fought against Omnics who had massacred hundreds before he came to the fight. He had given up his wealth and status and traveled the world. He’d honed his skills in ways his tutors could never have predicted. He had survived assassins who had attacked him in every way imaginable, and many ways that Hanzo would have never thought possible. He had been trained as a warrior; he could survive anything.

Less than a month into training at watchpoint Gibraltar, Hanzo nearly died falling off a cliff like an idiot.

It was a hot, sunny afternoon and Winston had asked if Hanzo could find an appropriate place to install a ladder down the cliff side to the sea. Someplace where they could put in a floating dock. It was a petty use of his abilities, but Hanzo was begrudgingly coming to recognize how much he appreciated anyone here benefiting from his work. It was nice to do something, anything, that was appreciated regardless of how important it was. 

There were two places, he decided after a quiet hour climbing along the cliffs, that steel staples could be driven into the cliffside to make a ladder. The second one wasn't a bad spot for a dock either, under the launch pad off a little shale beach. He was gazing down at the water, looking at the sheer cliff and thinking of handholds and perches, when he heard laughter behind him and turned.

Torbjorn, Hana and McCree had left the workshop beside the boardroom, and were clearly in the midst of some project together. Hana was in her stained, well worn one-piece coverall with the cuffs rolled up at her wrists and ankles. Torbjorn was holding out a schematic out to her, explaining something in rapid, fluid technobabble in his shirtsleeves and overalls. McCree walked a little behind them, carrying what looked like half of DVa's mech over his shoulder. He was laughing at Hana's remarks, or Torbjorn's polysyllabic explanations, or at something Hanzo couldn't guess at.

All three of them looked sweaty and tired and delighted, McCree most of all, he looked downright elated. It was something Hanzo had noticed before, how happy he was here. He looked like he had come home, like whatever he’d been doing before the Recall had been just time he had to spend before coming back here. It was something Hanzo recognized, and was envious of but also grateful for. McCree was so comfortable here it was a little contagious. 

McCree carefully set the half-mech down on the disk in front of the launch pad and stood back to stretch. None of them hadn’t noticed him, Hana and Torbjorn were both clustered together beside the Mech, totally absorbed, and McCree...

Hanzo started. He’d been thinking about home and belonging. He’d been wondering what they were doing with Hana’s mech. He hadn’t noticed McCree, just his exuberance and now he had, and Hanzo couldn't look away if someone had thrown something at him. 

McCree was in scuffed old jeans and an untucked, totally unbuttoned flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his big chest bare in the sun. He wasn't wearing his hat and his hair was damp at the temples and shone in the sunshine as he dragged one arm over his forehead. He looked more real in the sunshine somehow, like this was where he'd always belonged. He cocked his head at something Hana said and laughed with his head back.

Hanzo swallowed hard, staring at the long line of McCree’s throat, and he took an instinctive step away. They still hadn't noticed him, and he didn't want them to. He didn't want to be seen. He didn't want to be seen staring at McCree's bare chest and the brown nipples and the dark hair and the wide shoulders or the thick, muscled stomach. McCree had a scar over his right hip. There was a bruise over his stomach. That was entirely too much detail all at once and Hanzo wasn't going to be seen gawking.

The ground was suddenly gone from under him. He'd stupidly miscalculated how much room he'd had and Hanzo knew he had to catch himself, right now. He had to plan where his hands and feet would go. His years of training, a  _ lifetime  _ of training and perfecting this very skill meant he didn’t have to die like this. 

Except he had to react first. He had to actually move. He needed to look for handholds and footholds on the cliff. 

All he saw however, was the hair on McCree's belly narrowed into a trail that disappeared under that absurd belt buckle. His mind went helplessly blank as he stared at it.

He swore with absolute vitriolic disgust at himself.  _ Not  _ that kind of handhold--

"Hanzo!"

Hanzo’s fall was abruptly checked. Looking down at a fatal fall, the shale beach and choppy sea below him, all Hanzo could think of was how gentle that metal hand felt around his arm.

"Easy now," McCree pulled Hanzo back. "You alright?"

Hanzo's footing wasn't good, and he reached out instinctively and caught McCree's arm to steady himself as he came back from the edge. He realized what he'd done a second too late, his hand already flat against the curve of McCree's bicep where he couldn't seem to move it. McCree's arms were wide and solid and for such a big man he moved very carefully around Hanzo. 

Hanzo stopped breathing. He noticed, now that he was close enough to kiss, that McCree’s chest hair was slightly matted with sweat. That his nipples were dark brown and one of them was pierced. That there were pale lines of scars on McCree’s dark skin, dips and overlapping marks of old wounds and messy stitches. Hanzo watched in breathless fascination as a drop of sweat slid around the glinting metal of McCree’s nipple ring, dripped off the edge of his pec and fell down the tanned skin of his stomach before vanishing into the low slung jeans.

For one aching, frozen second, Hanzo stayed perfectly still, staring in mute wonder down McCree's chest.

"Hanzo? You alright? You look a bit..." McCree's was looking down at Hanzo, his head tipped a little forward, attentive and worried and thoughtlessly intimate. His other hand tentatively cupped Hanzo's shoulder to steady him, unreservedly trusting that Hanzo was just suffering from the shock of his almost fall, and nothing more.

The soft voice snapped Hanzo back to himself. Utterly mortified, he yanked his hand back and tensed to step away. He had to put some distance between them, had to recover himself and fight the heat in his face. He was brought up short when he realized McCree was still gently holding his arm. Incredibly gently, it was surprising really, that metal prosthetic was absurdly soft on his arm...

Hanzo ferociously collected himself, and frantically raked together all his inheritance of several generations of austerity, and glared pointedly down at the hand around his arm.

McCree's gaze followed his, "Oh, I... 'Scuse me." He seemed to flinch back a little, curl in on himself slightly as he snatched his hands off Hanzo and backed a step. He was a big man trying to make himself look smaller.

Hanzo felt like he'd slapped him.

He was trying to fight down the rising heat creeping up his neck. He felt full with unfamiliar wonder and admiration and heady, giddy horrible gratitude and blank, furious confusion that this was happening to him at all.

He'd been trained to master himself, control his emotions. He was gawking.  _ Blushing _ . He jerked back into the safety of his austerity, his composure, stiffened and opened his mouth to snap at McCree, force him back and away. Then shut his mouth again when he remembered Genji's words.  _ Deserved no unkindness. _

And the man might have saved his life.

Even if it was only endangered because McCree was practically half naked in the hot sunshine.

"Thank you," Hanzo managed stiffly, glaring at McCree. He couldn't quite breath right. His heartbeat was erratic.

McCree was still standing close. Close enough that Hanzo actually had to look up to meet his eyes. Close enough he could have leant forwards and kissed the bare, sweat damp collar bone at mouth level before him. He barely suppressed a sneer at his own idiocy and snapped his eyes up from McCree's chest to glare back up at him.

"Sure," McCree said, and there was some measure of resignation there, embarrassment maybe. He took another step back, easy and casual and the sad sort of chagrin was gone like it had never been there. "Didn't see you there Archer. Sorry we startled you."

Behind him, Torbjorn was watching Hanzo with one steady, hard blue eye. Hana Song was watching him with her arms crossed.

"We’re… Just working on the Mech, see if we can speed up the self detonation time for Hana. Well now they are, I'm just here for heavy lifting and looking good," McCree gave a half grin, cocked his head back and tipped his hips to one side. The open shirt slid open a little wider.  

Hanzo's mouth abruptly burned dry. He managed, by a force of will honed from a lifetime of strict training, to keep his eyes on McCree's face, and not allow himself to stare down at the long, sweaty,  _ thick _ bare torso. Again.

He barely managed a grunt in reply.

"Care to join us?" Torbjorn asked unexpectedly. Hanzo realized that all this time, Torbjorn hadn't shifted his gaze, and was still staring at Hanzo with the flat, unblinking focus of an engineer looking at a problem.

"I won't disturb you further," Hanzo said, more curtly than he'd intended. His voice was a little hoarse, his mouth was still dry. "Apologies," He said to McCree, with a brief, unintended bow. 

He turned and, not wishing to walk back up the track in plain sight, walked straight past the door of the boardroom and, in a burst of speed that came straight from mortified self-preservation, scaled the wall up to the roof  at a dead run.

Once safely out of sight, he dropped boneless to sit against the ductwork up on the hot, airless roof, silently gasping for breath.

"He ran away. You scared him off," Hana said unexpectedly from below.

"Didn't mean to," McCree replied with a little sigh, "Not an easy person to make friends with, our archer."

"Well, you did nearly startle him off a cliff," Hana pointed out. "You laugh like an ox."

"That's nothing," Torbjorn said dismissively. "That fall wouldn't have hurt him. He can climb as well as his brother, you both saw him run up a wall. Or did that, too, escape your keen perception. You, shameless, do your shirt up. You, lass, tell me where the signal wire runs through this."

"What's wrong with my shirt," McCree muttered.

Above them, well out of sight, Hanzo shoved his burning face into his hands and muffled a thin scream.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be posted Feb 13! Thank you again for stopping by, if you have any comments or requests, please let me know! Or come chat! You can find me on Tumblr at leoandlancer.tumblr.com (๑•́ ω •̀๑)  
> Next update will be chapter 2 of a Roadrat Mermaid AU next Monday!  
> This chapter is unbeta'd, so all the horribly embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes are mine, and I apologize.


	3. Saved by the Bird

The second time Hanzo lost his composure, he nearly killed McCree outright.

It wasn't intended, but the fact was, the moment Hanzo dashed through Symmetra's teleporter, he ran directly into McCree's arms on the other side.

The teleporter was an oddly beautiful thing, and Hanzo hadn't known what to expect when he first used it in training. If someone had pressed him for a prediction, he probably would have described his expectations by saying he anticipated it would be jagged, or cold, or suffocating. He'd been surprised and pleased to discover he'd traveled the length of their training ground in one warm, airy, weightless moment.

The first second on the other side of a teleporter, however, was one of Hanzo's least favorite parts of his new life. He was never sure where he would be, or who would be there. He lost his sense of direction and usually had to run around looking for a good vantage point to shoot from. He was never sure if he would be running into a waiting enemy.

So when he charged into the teleporter’s weightless half second of flight, he hit the ground on the other side blind and slammed directly into someone; Hanzo expected the worst.

He'd had an arrow nocked when he'd run into the teleporter, and instinctively jerked the bow to a full draw as he felt arms close around him, a bigger body crowding close.

"Hush, Hanzo, someone's..."

Hanzo jerked. McCree's voice in his ear, soft brown hair brushing his cheek, it was warm and dim against McCree's shoulder under his the brim of his hat.

The point of Hanzo's arrow slid between the edge of the chest plate and the softer, more flexible armor on McCree’s stomach. The gap where there was just flannel over brown skin and hair and pale, overlapping scars...

"Hanzo," McCree's voice caught, his body going still and tense around Hanzo.

Hanzo hadn't taken a breath, his eyes were shut and he had to take tension out of his bow string and McCree's arms were around his back and he couldn't _move_.

"Found you, you little fuckers." A new voice snarled from behind McCree.

An explosion went off behind McCree and he gave a bark of pain and dropped. Hanzo caught his breath and took a step back. He swept his bow up into full draw as three furious looking people came around the corner.

More pressing, they were preceded by two grenades.

Hanzo sighted and felt his hold on his rage slip as the arrow leapt from his bow. He didn't realize he'd called the dragons until they were in the air and roaring. Hanzo hadn't known how many of the anti-omnic extremists had found them, but the first one took his arrow squarely through the throat and was already dying before the dragons even reached him.

Winston told him later that the dragons had killed six of their targets on their long rampage but Hanzo didn't care just then. He was on his knees, crouching over McCree to cover him from the blast as the two grenades went off behind them.

"Foolish," Hanzo snapped when his ears stopped ringing and the streets were silent again. He leant away a little to study McCree for damage.

"Ha," McCree said, and again, there was that little flash of resignation, some sadness that Hanzo never saw on him at any other time. "Figured body blocking was the best I could do with the time I had. Knew they were coming up here to camp the teleporter. Glad I beat them to it. Help me up."

Hanzo let McCree hold his shoulders and pulled him up with an effort; the big man was solidly built.

McCree whistled as he blinked at the bodies lying down the alley. "Guess I didn't need to worry."

"Of course not," Hanzo said stiffly.

McCree looked from the trail of bodies back to Hanzo, "Nice shooting," He smiled into Hanzo's glare.

Hanzo opened his mouth to brush the compliment off, then shut it again and swallowed. He couldn't seem to look away from McCree's smile, or the obvious admiration. There didn't seem to be an ounce of jealousy in McCree, there never seemed to be any drive in him to outdo anyone. He never seemed to show anything but an easy going respect towards everyone's abilities, even, or perhaps especially, the strange ones. Hanzo would have noticed if he didn't. He'd been watching McCree, waiting to find something to dislike.

The only thing Hanzo found remotely inexplicable was that McCree would break sweets or cookies in two when he thought no one was looking, and saved half for later.

"Thank you." Hanzo managed stiffly. McCree's arm was still across his shoulders, heavy and solid and Hanzo was having trouble thinking of anything but how warm he was.

McCree glanced at his own arm, still around Hanzo's shoulders, and flinched back, already moving to step away, and then was brought up short. Hanzo's arm was still around McCree's waist, holding them together.

Hanzo and McCree realized at the same moment, and they both stiffened, Hanzo snatching his hand back as McCree stared at him.

"It was nothing," Hanzo said abruptly, bringing both his hands to his bow and holding it in front of him like a shy child at his first competition.

McCree was still gazing at Hanzo with his mouth a little open, eyes wide. "Sure," The edge of his mouth twitched into a smile before he seemed to shake himself and look away.

Hanzo let out a breath slowly, forcing his shoulders to relax.

"Others are cut off." McCree said after a moment, serious again. "And my comm's dead."

The teleporter was gone when Hanzo turned around. Symmetra would be here somewhere, but her duties were simply to give them a teleporter, and position turrets on their tertiary routes and watch for flankers. They were in an unfamiliar part of the city, they had their mission, and they were on their own for now.

They were alone.

The thought twisted uneasily in his gut. Hanzo hadn’t avoided McCree per se, just avoided situations in which his inability to speak without giving immediate offence could break his promise to Genji. He didn’t intend to be unkind to McCree. He was just constantly unnerved by the gunslinger, constantly aware of McCree’s genuine happiness and open admiration. Particularly aware of the warmth of him on this grey coldness of a cloudy, wet London evening. It wasn't really his fault, but Hanzo scowled mutely at him, unable to think of anything to say.

"Come on, target’s coming and it's down to us, we gotta go. I'll cover you 'till you're in position." McCree said quietly, glancing into then immediately away from Hanzo's glare.

Hanzo just nodded and together they picked their way through the bodies, and found their way to the vantage point they'd agreed Hanzo use.  

"This really alright?" McCree had accompanied Hanzo up to a little covered walkway over the street and was looking around and frowning. "Not much cover for you."

Hanzo just shook his head, "No, but it'll serve." He was a little distracted. The thought of McCree leaving to find the others or cover the secondary route, alone, was a troubling one. He was desperately trying to come up with a logical reason for McCree to stay here, where Hanzo could defend him.

"Think you'd mind if I stuck around and covered you?" McCree asked. He was looking uneasily back at the way they'd come, a simple stairway from the street with good cover around a corner.

Hanzo let out a breath of relief. "Please yourself," he said curtly.

"Sure," McCree said. He seemed immune to Hanzo's tone just now, and Hanzo didn't know why but found he was grateful for it.

Their target was a charismatic extremist who saw a population divided about Omnics having rights. He'd managed to get a nice little gang around him, funnelling money in for himself, and quietly killing those who had threatened his power. He was planning an attack on parliament during a planned march for Omnic solidarity. Hanzo frowned and shifted his footing a little, widening his stance as he shot a sonic arrow at the street corner below him. They had to take him out first. He'd already killed two policemen three of his own gang and seven Omnics.

It began to rain, the fog becoming just slightly more aggressive, then it started a brisk patter. Suddenly, Hanzo couldn't see across the street for the downpour. They were barely protected by the meagre cover over the walkway and it was bleakly damp and cold. When Hanzo huffed out an irritated little sigh, it was white in the air before him.

"No one's going out in this," McCree muttered. He sounded disgusted, as though the rain and wet weather was some personal offence.  

Hanzo silently agreed, but resolutely kept watch, getting colder and more impatient the longer the rain went on and their target didn't show.

"Ain't you cold?" McCree asked after what felt like an hour and was probably only about four minutes.

"No," Hanzo lied.

McCree just snorted. "Sure. Here, this won't slow you down none."

Hanzo started as something soft and warm and comfortably heavy was settled abruptly over his shoulders. Quite suddenly, he found himself deliciously and comfortably impervious to the damp. The smell of sage and smoke and dust washed up over him, the sense that the heat soaking into him came from an afternoon in bright summer sunshine. The red serape was around his shoulders, and McCree was right, it wouldn't hinder his draw or movement.

"Take it back," Hanzo snapped, rattled and barely stopping himself from nuzzling into the wool over his shoulder, "I don't need your cast offs."

"Not a cast-off. I'll have you know I'm attached to that," McCree said, smiling fearlessly into Hanzo's irritation with his arms crossed. "I’ll take it back if you really don’t want it, but I don't need it right now."

Hanzo engaged in a silent struggle with himself, not helped by the knowledge that McCree was quietly watching him, smiling a little.

"Fine," Hanzo muttered. The warmth and unexpected softness of the wool was what won him over. That and the smell; it somehow smelled like sunshine, like wool left in the baking sun too long until it had a memory of it's own about where it belonged.

"Glad to be of assistance," McCree said, still smiling. His breath was white in the air before him, and the flannel and armour didn't look adequate. Hanzo scowled, suddenly aware that McCree would apparently rather be cold than comfortable if it meant Hanzo was warm.

"And for yourself?" Hanzo shot another sonic arrow down into the street at the corner. McCree had been right, there was no hindrance to his draw.

McCree just shrugged. "I'll be fine. You're the one with the important work here. I'm just covering you."

Hanzo grunted. Nothing but rainwater was moving on the street under them, the fog was gone and now the heavy rain was all they had to contend with. The temperature kept dropping. He was trying to think of something to say, some way to break the silence of the rain pouring down, and then something moved in the roof above them.

Hanzo and McCree both stiffened and turned in ludicris unity, tensing around their weapons.

A crow, huge and black and unaffected stared back at them from a rafter. Hanzo let out his breath, and it cawed at them.

"Now don't scare me like that," McCree said amiably. The crow ruffled it's feathers in reply, watching them with it's head tipped speculatively to one side.

Hanzo turned back to the street, and McCree leaned on the wide rail beside him. He hadn't been so close before, and Hanzo didn't notice when he'd stepped up into his space as though to cover him. Side by side under the streaming eave of the little walkway roof, they watched the rain fall down into the grey streets of London. The crow rustled above them in the rafters once or twice more. A few girls in dresses and rubber boots with fancy heels hanging off their wrists ran together up the street, holding tiny umbrellas up against the downpour. McCree's breath was white in the air before them. Minutes went by, and their target didn't show.

"Take half," Hanzo said. He hadn't meant to say anything, but the words had slipped out and he froze for a second before forcing himself to appear as though he'd meant to say it all along.

"Half?" McCree glanced at Hanzo, and Hanzo looked away. They were standing side by side, their shoulders almost touching, and there wasn't much of a height difference with McCree leaning on the rail.

"Your serape," Hanzo bullied his way through the words, drawing on every lesson he had ever been taught about giving orders in wartimes. He held up one corner of the red wool to McCree. "Take half."

"Oh," McCree hesitated, blinked, and there was some internal war going on behind his brown eyes that Hanzo couldn't guess at. He didn't know what outcome to want. Then, very gently, McCree took the offered corner of his serape, and drew it over his shoulders. "Thanks, partner."

Hanzo didn't trust himself to speak. They were shoulder to shoulder now, their arms touching under the serape as McCree leaned on the rail, pulling the serape more comfortably around himself. There was a lot more of it then Hanzo had originally thought, and it was warmer with the two of them sharing it. His heart was beating too hard and his shoulders were stiff with tension and his bare left arm was pressed to McCree's, he could feel how hot McCree's skin was through the flannel.

He shook himself, scowled and yanked his attention down to the street again, back to his assignment. Then his focus was broken again when McCree casually reached across them, gathered up Hanzo's corner of the serape and pulled it towards himself, and held his corner out to Hanzo.

Hanzo blinked, then took it and mirrored McCree as they both pulled each other's corners until the serape was pulled tight around them both. They were pressed together, from shoulder to hip, with the serape snuggly overlapping in front of them. Hanzo's hands were trembling slightly as he dug his fingers into the handful of warm wool, safely out of sight.

They stood side by side, McCree leaning on the rail of the walkway and Hanzo hoping McCree couldn't feel him trembling. He didn't want to move, or breathe, didn't want to stay so close to McCree where he would be able to tell Hanzo's fragile composure was hanging by a thread. Where he could see the red in his cheeks from a blush Hanzo hadn't been able to tame. McCree was standing very still beside him, radiating heat like there was a sun inside him, breathing slow and easy.

Hanzo took a breath that made his chest shudder and forced some of the tension out of his shoulders, forced himself to relax slightly. They were on assignment. He had work to do.

It occurred to him that he hadn't seen anything he could dislike in McCree, but there was plenty for McCree to notice about him. There were plenty of unlikable qualities in Hanzo. Plenty of reasons for a man like McCree to understand they were incompatible.

The thought cut some of the tension out of his shoulders and he let out his breath in a long, white sigh. He watched the cloud his breath left vanish into the driving rain. The thought was a rational one, and it should have been reassuring. Instead, Hanzo just felt disappointed, and self conscious in a way he had never recognized in himself. It was a bleak feeling, but it let him lean against the rail next to McCree, and stare out at the rain.

"You’re shivering, you not warm enough yet?" McCree asked quietly after a few minutes.

If he said no, McCree would probably give him his shirt. "I’m fine," Hanzo snapped. Furious with himself all over. It was too easy to remember McCree without a shirt. Hanzo had been thinking about that sunny day on the Watchpoint more or less constantly. He could have drawn McCree from memory in that moment.

"Alright," McCree said. Again, the little tone in his voice, resignation or disappointment or hurt, and Hanzo remembered again what Genji had told him.

"Thank you," Hanzo said, then more words fought their way out of his mouth without his being able to stop them, "It's generous of you."

"I don't mind sharing with you," McCree replied quietly. "Sorry if I put you off though. Not my intention."

Before Hanzo could wrestle something to say into that polite, resigned little apology, there was a clatter and a rustle over them. They both started but it was just the crow, who flapped once and settled on the rail a few feet from McCree.

"Well hey," McCree murmured to it.

They both studied the crow, Hanzo leaning a little to see it around McCree, and McCree began rummaging in his pockets. It was big, bigger then Hanzo had supposed, and glossy blue-black in the faded little light above them. It stared back Hanzo, then McCree with bright, unblinking interest.

"Take a load off," McCree said softly to it. He reached out towards the bird, slowly and carefully, something held in his hand that Hanzo couldn't see. The crow skipped back, wary but interested, and McCree broke half of a cookie into crumbs and left it on the wide rail between them.

The crow eyed the offering with interest. Hanzo started at it. Winston had made peanut butter cookies yesterday, and Hanzo had watched McCree save half of one of his for later. For this apparently. The crow hopped forward, bold and watchful, it's wings already partially spread in case of a quick getaway. It plucked a whole peanut out of the broken up cookie and hopped back a little, chortling to itself and settling it's wings back down.

"You're welcome," McCree murmured, smiling at it.

Hanzo wasn't watching the crow anymore, he was slightly slack jawed as he watched McCree. There was a little scar from a burn under his ear, the collar of his shirt was worn to threads in one place, the scruff of beard under his jaw was a few days old. Everything about him was broken-in and made comfortable by use and function. He had a purpose and a place for everything he carried. He kept his food to coax wild animals and was willing to go cold if it meant Hanzo was warm. He was extremely thoughtful for someone Hanzo had expected to be reckless.

The crow was closer to them on the rail, picking happily at the broken up cookie and keeping one eye on McCree and Hanzo for any sudden onslaught of animal cruelty. It finished it's cookie, and looked expectantly looked up at McCree.

"I got nothing else," McCree shrugged, "Wish you a pleasant night though."

The crow hopped and rustled, either irritated with McCree's unpreparedness or reaching a sugar high, Hanzo couldn't tell. There were peanut butter cookie crumbs on the side of it's beak. It hopped from side to side, flirting it's feathers and showing off.

"Cute's not gonna make more cookie appear, you're better off looking elsewhere," McCree said apologetically.

Hanzo was watching McCree's mouth move, watching him smile, revelling in the steady, heavy warmth of McCree pressed along his side. He was quietly and gratefully enjoying the chance to stare while McCree’s attention directed elsewhere. The rain was a constant, pouring hush in his ears, the smell of the wet stone around him mingling with McCree's wool and sage. Hanzo wondered if everything was so drawn to McCree, crows and assassins alike.

Something clicked down in the street below them, and the crow's wings snapped open in alarm as it screamed a warning.

Hanzo was already turning, cursing himself when a rifle fired in the street below them. McCree barked out, in shock or pain, and Hanzo felt him stagger. The serape jerked, and went loose and then fell away and Hanzo was already moving, drawing an arrow back to his cheek.

Then Hanzo found he had nothing to aim at.

The rifle shot cracked and echoed back and forth up the quiet street, and Hanzo could see no one below them. The rain was coming down in sheets and Hanzo was furious with himself because he and McCree had made an easy target in the elevated walkway with the light behind them. This spot had only been valuable if Hanzo had seen their target first. Now it was just a shooting gallery.

The crow was in the air before him, huge black wings beating in the rain, water pouring off it as it flapped to gain height, cawing out an offended warning as it went.  Then it banked suddenly with a startled cry and fought desperately upwind.  

Hanzo would have never seen him without the crow. He barely saw him through the rain, even knowing where to look. Something that started a crow that was bold enough to eat next to humans. A puff of breath gone white made briefly visible in the rain.

Someone was standing in the thundering downpour, watching them from the darkness of a little alleyway halfway down the street. Hanzo's gut went cold when he saw them..

They were raising a rifle to their shoulder again, aiming at Hanzo this time.

"Scatter," Hanzo snapped, adjusted his aim, and fired.

The figure was sighting along the crosshairs, the stock of the rifle leveled at him, when Hanzo's scatter arrow hit the wall behind him and broke apart into fragments. There was a shriek and a curse, and the _pingpingping_ of ricocheting metal, and Hanzo pulled another arrow back to his cheek.

Their target didn't back down as Hanzo hoped he would. He staggered a step out of the alley with the rifle still raised, and fired. It was a blind shot that owed a lot to rage and luck to hit anything, and the noise of it shattered through the rain again. A bullet whined past him, and Hanzo's arrow was already in the air.

It struck their wounded target squarely in the chest. They started to fall, and Hanzo had already lost interest in them.

"Are you hit? McCree," Hanzo turned fast, tense and brusque with unfamiliar panic.

"I'm fine," McCree had Peacekeeper in his hand, the serape crumpled on the ground and his hat on the other side of the walkway. His hair was ruffled and there was colour high on his cheeks. "Startled me is all."

Hanzo couldn't talk around the thudding of his own heart. His hands were trembling again as he watched McCree stoop and pick his hat up. It had a new notch shot through the edge of the brim and Hanzo stopped breathing when he saw it.

"You got him?" McCree asked. He didn't seem ruffled by the near miss, just combed his fingers through his hair and shoved his hat back into place.

"Yes," Hanzo said. _Hopefully_ , he thought. He needed to go down into the street and check to make sure his shot had been a fatal one. He needed to make sure that the police that came were those that Winston had been in contact with. He needed to get out of here. He needed to find the rest of their team at the Watchpoint. Instead, he bent to pick up the serape and shook the dust off it.

"Much obliged," McCree said, stepping over and taking the serape as Hanzo held it out to him. "And good shooting."

"I should have seen him," Hanzo grunted, unable to restrain his irritation, or the fury that scorched up the back of his throat. He'd been so literally wrapped up in McCree, so absorbed watching him, someone had actually gotten a shot off. It could have killed them. "I was distracted."

He turned sharply from McCree, stalking to the stairs back to the street and stepping out into the wall of rain without a shred of hesitation.

"Sorry," McCree followed him, swinging his serape into place around his shoulders and sounding a little sheepish. "Shouldn't have bothered with the crow just that..."

"It wasn't the crow," Hanzo snapped. Then realized what he'd said and missed a step. He wished he'd bitten his tongue.

"Oh," McCree said, sounding bewildered. "Well, I don't know what else..."

Hanzo paused, glaring though the rain with his heart thudding against his throat and adrenaline making his frustration and relief a confusing tangled mess inside his ribs. He was already soaked, already missing the comfort of the wool serape and of McCree's warmth beside him.

"It's nothing," Hanzo cut him off.

They reached the body lying flat on it’s back on the sidewalk and started down at it. It had been a fatal shot, and an unnecessary one; he’d already been dying from the shrapnel the scatter arrow had peppered him with. He was young and cruel, with a illegal rifle an a lot of money, and he had had plans to kill dozens of people. The only thing that mattered to Hanzo was that he’d failed to kill McCree. They stood over it for a few seconds before McCree spit indelicately into the streaming gutter.

There was a rustle in the air over them and the crow settled on a street lamp, cawing belligerently down at the fresh corpse as rain poured off it’s half spread wings. Crows the world over seemed to have a gift for trash talk, Hanzo had noticed that before.

"You tell him," McCree said, looking up into the rain at the crow. Water was sluicing off the back of his hat.

Hanzo was wondering if he should collect his arrows and just leave, then looked up at a flicker of blue light and Tracer skidded to a stop beside them. The rain was travelling sideways after her.

"Hey, there you are, been coming to get you! McCree, I thought you were covering the secondary route?"

"I should have been," McCree nodded to Tracer. "Everything alright? After we lost the teleporter I didn't want to split up anymore."

"Probably for the best. Hanzo, you alright love, you look a bit..." She trailed off, her head tipped a little to one side.

"Fine," Hanzo said shortly. He was soaked to the skin and freezing again. He pushed his hands up his face to pull his wet hair back. Briefly, in the privacy of his hands, shut his eyes and grit his teeth and forced a breath out. He had to do better if he wanted to stay here. And he did want to stay here.

"We can leave this for the bobbys, they'll love it,” Tracer looked untroubled by the rain. Like only one in every three drops could actually touch her. “Some of Winston's friends are already on their way. We've already got Symmetra back at the cathedral, we tried to recall you two too but guessing your comms died?"

McCree nodded, and the three of them looked around at a glimmer of light through the rain.  Blue and white lights were flashing from around a corner but without sirens because the police Winston had invited to clear away the remains knew what they were about to find.

"Come on then, back to the cathedral." Tracer blinked down the street by several paces, and turned, hopping backwards through the rain to beckon them on.

McCree waved goodbye to the crow and Hanzo retrieved his arrow and they both turned together after Tracer. Neither of them knew their way well around London well enough to try going on their own, even if they wanted to.

"Don't be sorry," Hanzo said when they loped into Kings Row. Tracer was a blue flicker in the rain ahead of them.

"Pardon?" McCree seemed a little startled, apparently he hadn’t been expecting Hanzo to offer any further comment.

"Your apology, earlier. When I was distracted it wasn't..." Hanzo wrestled briefly with word choice. "Wasn't your fault."

"Oh," McCree said, as they passed through the gate by the hotel and the bright lights from the theatre spilled over them.  "Huh."

Hanzo wanted to say more, but bit his tongue until they reached the steps of the cathedral, where Overwatch held the Watchpoint. "Thank you, for staying with me," he was still furious at himself, but he needed for McCree to know that Hanzo didn't blame him for anything. "And sharing your serape."

McCree laughed, "That's nothing." He pulled the door of the cathedral open and thoughtlessly held it for Hanzo.

It was barely warmer than outside in the entryway of the cathedral, and Hanzo paused in the to wring water out of his hair. McCree did the same, pulling the sodden red serape off his shoulders and shaking water out of it. He tipped one foot up, then the other, and let water run out of his boots. Together they stood in soggy solidarity until the entryway looked like it had been submerged and they had shed what felt like several pounds of London rain.

"Hanzo," McCree started, just as they were dry enough to head in after Tracer. "You don't mind me too much do you?"

Hanzo looked around at him, fast and tense. McCree was holding his hat by the brim in both hands like a child, turned slightly away from him, shielding his right side as though expecting a blow. Hanzo blinked at him, rattled again, amazed by the bluntly hopeful tone of McCree’s voice. He opened his mouth, remembered his track record for trying to find the right words when McCree was around just in time, and just shook his head.

"Good," McCree let out a breath as he glanced down, ducking his head to hide a shy little smile. He ran one hand through his damp hair and shoved his head back into place. He had his serape draped over one shoulder, and hooked his thumbs into his belt. McCree turned back towards Hanzo, facing him squarely again. "That's good.” He smiled like he was glad Hanzo was right where he could find him.

Hanzo was at risk of standing and staring stupidly at him until dawn, whenever that would possibly be, if they could even see it through the downpour. Seconds passed and rain water dripped off both of them as they stood in the entry to the ancient stone building and studied one another. McCree smiling softly, Hanzo scowling with more confusion than irritation.

Then Hanzo abruptly shook himself and turned away. He had to get into something dry, get something warm in him, see Ana and make sure the last of his missing health was patched up. He had to stop staring at McCree before it got too obvious.

He heard McCree fall into step behind him, and together they walked into the warmth and light of the Watchpoint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be posted Feb 16, and it's for the protectiveness trope. Thank you for reading up to here, and I hope you're enjoying this! If you have any comments or requests, please let me know! Or come chat! You can find me on [my Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com)!  
> This chapter was beta'ed by the lovely Daishar who has never in her life played Overwatch but she does love me and I am deeply grateful. ٩(ó｡ò۶ ♡)))♬
> 
> A podfic by sksninja can be found [here!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his)


	4. That Belt Buckle's Not Just for Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some amazing art of this chapter has been done by the fabulous Elliephant [Elliephantes on Tumblr!!](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com/post/158028905109/elliephantes-i-read-an-amazing-fic-by) Gooo check it out =D

The third time Hanzo lost his composure, he found out why McCree wore that belt buckle.  

McCree was drunk when Hanzo arrived. Drunk and draped over the bar, holding forth to about fifteen people who were invariably invested in whatever he was saying. He was talking fast, gesturing with one hand and every so often he'd have to pause because everyone would erupt with laughter. People kept pushing more drinks in front of him. The bartender was looking on with beneficent interest, clearly having a profitable night.

McCree was flushed and grinning and whatever he was saying was lost on Hanzo. His Spanish wasn't bad, but McCree was speaking a drunk, fast version of the local dialect and Hanzo could pick out one in three words if he cared to try.

Which he didn't.

McCree had hit his distress beacon four minutes ago. Hanzo had spent that four minutes sprinting over rooftops and scaling walls and jumping wildly over nighttime streets to reach him. Now Hanzo was panting and sweating, furious at his own concern. He'd spent four minutes with his heart pounding in his throat in terror and McCree was slamming back the house tequila.

It took him a full minute of standing, seething at his idiocy and McCree's irresponsibility, before he could catch his breath. He should turn around and go back to the Watchpoint in the old opera house and leave McCree to the rest of his evening. Then he took a breath, swallowed his irritation and watched more carefully, just to make sure.

McCree wasn't actually drinking. Hanzo cocked his head and took in the scene again. McCree kept pushing the gifted drinks to the party around him. A growing group of people who he'd arranged around him. Like a shield; a lot of witnesses.

McCree was keeping his right hand under his serape, where Peacekeeper would be.

"Excuse me," Hanzo grunted, pushing his way through the group. He'd crossed from the street outside to the middle of the bar in one unhesitating lunge. There were too many people jostling him around, unsure where he'd come from and reluctant to give up their place near McCree. He reached out and got a hold on McCree's left arm, using it to haul himself in.

McCree turned, fast and instinctive and  _ scared _ , then his face lit up, "Hanzo!"

Hanzo stopped breathing for a moment, struck staring. McCree had gone from drunk terror to unbridled delight and relief in a flash, and Hanzo was momentarily dazzled. 

McCree said something, more incomprehensible spanish that delighted his adoring crowd and they hooted and laughed, raising drinks and patting Hanzo on the back. In that general happy chaos, McCree turned his hand around Hanzo's arm until they were holding each other's wrists. He pulled Hanzo in, a sharp, surprising burst of strength he clearly couldn't control.

"Careful," Hanzo snapped. He only barely managed to stay on his feet. It was crowded around McCree, and he stumbled slightly and had to catch McCree's shoulder to keep his balance. "What's wrong..." Hanzo started, desperate to get whatever this was over with and bring McCree back to the Watchpoint where he'd be safe.

Then he stopped cold, his breath catching in his throat because McCree pulled him up until they were chest to chest, and Hanzo was standing between his spread knees. McCree hooked his arm arm around Hanzo’s back, and sighed happily, nuzzling into Hanzo shoulder. Which meant that for a long moment, the touch of hot skin and scruffy beard and McCree's open mouth on Hanzo's neck and bare shoulder was everything in Hanzo's world.

"Please Hanzo," McCree said softly, "please don't move."

Hanzo couldn't have moved if someone had threatened him with a mallet. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end and he was frozen in place. His soul was halfway out of his body and his back was so tense it was almost painful. His childhood tutors could have wished for posture this good. He could feel McCree's lips move against the skin under his ear. It took Hanzo a full second and a half to realize McCree had spoken in Japanese.

It took him another useless second to realize that while McCree's English didn't carry a spanish accent, his Japanese did.

"What is it," Hanzo breathed, slamming himself abruptly back into the present. He tried to force his head down, tried to make himself not look as stunned as he felt. Then realized he'd already tipped his head down without noticing, so his cheek was in McCree’s hair. 

"Drugged," McCree said. His voice was shaking. "Like the others were before they were kidnapped. Hanzo, take me back to the Watchpoint, the guys in the corner been staring at me. I can't leave on my own." He spoke softly, his lips moving over Hanzo's ear.

Hanzo held his breath and barely nodded. There were three people in one smokey corner pretending not to be watching them. They were drinking imported beer, not the ubiquitous tequila and were certainly not local. 

For weeks, they'd been trying to track down a worryingly efficient group of human and omnic traffickers. Hanzo, McCree, Lucio, Hana, Winston and Ana had been staying in a hastily set up Watchpoint in this ancient city on the edge of a jungle and getting increasingly frustrated by their inability to complete this mission. So far, all they could do was defend a few key areas to rescue those who had been kidnapped, and wait for whoever had been snatching them to make a mistake, or try to take someone from them.

They were not taking McCree. They wouldn't take him from Hanzo.

"Get up, I've got you." Hanzo said softly, then in his best spanish to the bartender, "He's leaving."

The bartender nodded with the serene equanimity of a man who's already made his week’s earnings. The group who'd been lingering around McCree groaned in disappointment and began talking fast, asking him to stay.

Hanzo couldn't keep them all from touching McCree, just set his teeth in a snarl while lovely young men and women came and crowded in close. They stroked his arm and spoke in soft voices, asking McCree for one more drink with him, another story, a little more time. They murmured their names and phone numbers and Hanzo kept fighting to keep McCree upright, not convinced the hungry group around them wasn't deliberately pushing him off balance to slow them down. Finally, Hanzo caught a few words of one woman's whispered proposition, and dropped his grudging stoicism. He pulled McCree hard against him and shot a vitriolic glare of pure hatred into the group of McCree’s admirers.

A few people flinched.

"He's going home," Hanzo snarled at them, barely restraining himself from shoving the happy drunks away. "With me. Don't touch him."

"No need to get like that," a man leaning on the bar behind McCree smiled straight back at Hanzo and smiled, "He's been a delight, and it’s not so late. Perhaps you could stay and join us? We could find some friends for you both."

"No thanks darlin'," McCree muttered against Hanzo's neck, "Hanzo's all the man I need. " He was on his feet at least, his face still buried in Hanzo's shoulder, his right hand still under his serape where Peacekeeper would be.

"No," Hanzo snarled, far more belligerent than McCree. He kept his left arm around McCree's waist, pulling him in tight, trying to keep him steady on his feet. He could feel McCree trembling. "I already told you he's with me."

The man at the bar held up both hands in unruffled resignation, and turned to a less well guarded prospect.

"Can you walk?" Hanzo asked in quiet Japanese to McCree.

"Yeah, 'course" McCree said in English, then scowled and shook his head a little, struggling to stand upright and tried to pull his head up from of Hanzo's shoulder. "Maybe not," He went on. And then by some miracle of dexterity, or else from long practice, threaded his free hand through the crowd and picked his hat up from the bar and replaced it over his messy hair.

"Try," Hanzo said pulling him towards the propped open door and the open air of the street. McCree tried. Over the last few months working together, Hanzo had come to realize McCree was typically game for any suggestion Hanzo offered. It was a trust Hanzo wasn't sure he deserved, but was quietly grateful of none the less. He'd never been proud of having anyone else's trust like this, or been particularly aware of it. Furthermore, it was dawning on him right at this moment he would rather die than see McCree come to harm for following him.

"Thanks," McCree sighed when they managed the steps down into the street. He breathed in deep with his arm around Hanzo's shoulders and tipped his head back. "Scared until you came. Knew you'd come. Hoped you'd come."

"Of course," Hanzo grunted. McCree was heavy and unsteady on his feet and every nerve in Hanzo's body was drawn so tight he might as well be hanging from them. "Do you know what they gave you?"

"No idea," McCree said. He was still staring upwards, seeming much happier and more at ease with Hanzo beside him. His hand was cupped over Hanzo's shoulder, close to his neck.

Hanzo checked if anyone was following them down the wide street, tried to check the dark alleyways between shops and houses as they passed them. Kept having to ignore McCree's thumb brushing back and forth over the nape of his neck. His skin still felt hot where McCree's beard had nuzzled against him.

"Stars are nice," McCree said absently, as though just coming to the conclusion after protracted consideration. "They're nice Hanzo, look. You ever seen the stars over the plains? Some sight. Used to lie on the roof of the gas station when I was a kid, stare up at the stars wondering what the hell their names were. Made up my own constellations and stories for them. Helped when there wasn't much to eat, or had a bad day."

The thought of a teenage McCree lying alone under the stars and naming them for company jolted some strange mix of nostalgia and loneliness in Hanzo. He slowed slightly, they weren't being followed, and tipped his head back. McCree was right, the stars were bright overhead, and the southern constellations were lovely. Hanzo had been surprised they were so clear over the city, even with the humid summer air. He slowed again, or maybe McCree did, and they both walked a little unsteadily down the street, their faces turned up.

"Did you learn their names?" Hanzo heard himself ask the question and it startled him back to the present. He shook himself and hitched McCree a little more firmly against his side. The street wasn't quite empty around him, but the only people were locals delighted for an evening on the town. The walls and fences on either side of the street had heavy hibiscus boughs blooming over them. The air was warm and heavy with the smell of flowers.

"Sure did," McCree said happily, "After I joined Overwatch. It was nice you know? Fulfilling. Whenever we traveled, I'd learn the constellations overhead. Good to have them for company. And something to do. "

Hanzo grunted. He reached up and took McCree's hand from where it was idly stroking his neck, and drew McCree's arm a little more firmly around his shoulders.

"You like Overwatch alright Hanzo?" McCree asked a few more uneven steps later. His voice was low, a purr in his chest that Hanzo knew no one else could have heard, it was just for him. "You've been here few months. Keep hoping you'll stick around a little longer. Never sure if you will though. Don't like thinking of you leaving."

Hanzo opened his mouth, trying to think of some way to answer. Something that wouldn't give away how badly Hanzo wanted to stay, or how much he expected to not be allowed to. Everytime Winston wanted to talk, Hanzo dreaded that he would be informed that he wasn't a good fit for Overwatch, that he wasn't needed here. He'd spent the last several months anxiously expecting he would shortly be told to leave. 

In the silence that followed, McCree slowly rubbed his thumb back and forth over the inside of Hanzo's wrist. 

Hanzo bit his lip and reminded himself firmly that McCree probably didn’t realized what he was doing. McCree was apparently a gentle, clingy drunk, and an affectionate one, and nothing McCree was saying or doing was for Hanzo specifically. 

He just hoped McCree wouldn't remember any of this tomorrow morning. Hanzo's mouth was dry and his face was hot and McCree tipped his head to one side to nuzzle Hanzo's cheek. He didn’t want McCree to feel awkward around him, he didn’t want McCree to apologize. It was dim and warm under the brim of McCree's hat, and Hanzo's breath was soft and shaking. He had to stop himself from leaning back into McCree. This wasn't for him, he reminded himself with his teeth set, McCree would be like this for anyone who'd come to save him from getting drugged and possibly kidnapped.

"Keep hoping you'll get around to liking me some," McCree said softly.

Hanzo made a small, pained noise and missed a step. He barely managed to catch the resulting sway in McCree's balance. At least McCree was starting to lean into Hanzo, blindly trusting him to bare his weight.

"'M grateful you tolerate me alright, don't get me wrong. I mean, you've got good taste, and I'm not what you like, you couldn't call me a safe bet in good conscious. I sure am  _ not  _ unrealistic about what folks see me as." McCree chuckled, shaking his head. He was still rubbing the smooth skin on the inside of Hanzo's wrist. "Some discarded outlaw with wild aspirations of heroism, a bounty on his head and bad press. Just wish..."

And there was that same resignation, the embarrassment again. McCree tensed slightly, curling in on himself to make himself small, a brief moment that Hanzo wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been so used to watching McCree, so familiar with his movements and expressions. If he hadn't already seen this exact mood before; a familiar heartbreak that McCree carried well.

"I'm staying with Overwatch," Hanzo said briefly. He kept his voice down but he didn't try to sound brusque or annoyed about it. He needed McCree to believe him, just for now. He wouldn't remember tomorrow morning anyway. "I'm staying with you."

"Oh," McCree slowed, though it might have been stagger, "Oh, that's good Hanzo."

They'd reached a small courtyard, flanked by shops and with a fountain in the middle of a wide ring of grass and flower beds, dotted with a few spreading trees. Strings of lanterns, and coloured flags hung from the walls of the buildings to the fountain. During the day it was a hot, bustling, colourful market space, packed with people and noisy with music and chatter. It was empty and quiet now, too late for most people. The fountain wasn’t playing, and the wide pool of water around it looked like a sheet of glass.

"Nice that you're staying," McCree said quietly. He was smiling, looking up at the stars with his hat pushed back and his arm around Hanzo's shoulders. "Real nice."

He staggered when they crossed the grass, and his weight seemed to double.

"Let me just..." McCree murmured, pulling towards the fountain.

"No," Hanzo, a veteran of dealing with drunk optimists, deflected McCree's attempt at making a run for a ten foot wide, invitingly cool looking disk water. "No, here, sit..." He managed, mostly by a childhood of judo training, to sling McCree onto one of the stone slabs used for benches. 

"Nice," McCree instantly assented and flopped down along the length of the cool stone, squirming his shoulders back and forth happily. His hat topped off and sat brim down beside him. "Good idea, Hanzo."

Hanzo paused, looking down at McCree spread out on his back. They'd been working together for months. Months spent in training and on missions and sharing meals. Weeks spent feeling tongue tied and overwhelmed whenever they were alone. Hanzo had never been shy until he'd met McCree. A big, easy going gunslinger with a soft smile and big brown eyes, who wanted Hanzo to come for him when he got scared, wanted Hanzo to stick around.

He was smiling up at Hanzo now, the happy, thoughtlessly direct gaze of a happy drunk feeling safe. Hanzo couldn't think of a damn thing to say.

McCree sighed, caught Hanzo's wrist and tugged gently. "Want to take a load off? There's room."

Hanzo wanted to get back to the safety of the Watchpoint. McCree was drugged and the courtyard wasn't safe and there were kidnappers in town and Hanzo wanted to go to bed. But McCree wasn't scared anymore, and he probably wouldn't remember this tomorrow morning anyway. And Hanzo didn't care nearly as much about anything as much as he wanted to stay with McCree, right here in the empty courtyard under the stars.

"Hanzo?" McCree's hand was light on his wrist. Light enough that Hanzo could have pulled away without any effort and they both knew it.

Instead, Hanzo sank back to sit on the edge of the stone bench, and turned his hand until he held McCree's.

"Oh," McCree said again, quieter this time, and his face in the dim orange glow from the lamp over the fountain was pretty with surprised pleasure. He looked younger like this. Drugged and nearly boneless from it, smiling at Hanzo in the middle of the night with his hair ruffled and hand in Hanzo's.

Hanzo didn't trust himself to speak. Didn't trust himself to move. He was already wildly outside his own boundaries. He'd made rules for himself for dealing with McCree. He'd needed them to keep his composure intact. McCree had a way of easing his austerity, his reserve and poise down. Hanzo didn't think he did it consciously, maybe he didn't notice, but it meant that Hanzo found himself more and more prone to breaking his own rules. Found it was easier when they were on assignment together to relax around him, talk more. Found it was easier to touch McCree, idly or just by accident or just to cover him, communicate silently, point something out or get his attention.

It was selfish of him, but Hanzo enjoyed those stolen touches more than he should.

"McCree," Hanzo said slowly, telling himself that McCree wouldn't remember this tomorrow morning. Telling himself that it would be easier to say it now, when it couldn't possibly mater. "I don't think... You are not some discarded outlaw, you're..." And then he had to stop, because McCree's hand had gone still in his, the pad of his thumb barely trembling against Hanzo's wrist.

He realized what he'd been about to say and shook his head sharply and jerked himself back into line. McCree was drunk and drugged and he would be this sweet to  _ anyone _ . Hanzo wasn't special, not to McCree, and he needed to remember that. For Hanzo to indulge himself like this, it wasn't just selfish, it was cruel. McCree couldn't know how much it meant to Hanzo, how close this came to using McCree. He steeled himself, and told himself again that he couldn't afford distractions.

"Yep, there he goes," McCree said very softly, and sighed. His hand relaxed in Hanzo's, and again, the same flash of resignation that cut the tension in McCree's shoulders as Hanzo watched. He shut his eyes, his face gone blandly inexpressive. 

Hanzo felt something unnervingly like guilt twist in his gut. "McCree," he startled himself by speaking, and then had nothing to say, nothing at all.

"Evening, evening to you gents. What a fine night, don't you say so? "

The saccharine tone made the face of the man saying it all the worse. One of the strangers from the bar, a stringy tall man with sideburns and a sugary smile. Hanzo snapped back to full alert, rounding with so much ferocious intensity that the man stopped dead and drew back slightly.

Genji had remarked before that Hanzo's glare could split an oyster at sixty paces. It was more than enough to make a tall man with no posture straighten his spine like an anxious meerkat and stop cold.

"Ha," McCree snorted, watching with his head turned to one side on the stone. "Wait until he starts talking. Then you're gonna know fear."

The man forced a smile and he cocked his head slightly. Six more people sidled out from behind the spreading trees and the fountain, oozed out from the dark doorways of the closed up shops. They weren't surrounding him, just spread out along the other side of the fountain, blocking his way to the Watchpoint.

"We're just out for a stroll. Saw your friend there at the pub and thought we'd like to have a chat. You two look familiar, if you don't mind me saying so. You boys both stand out somewhat."

"Not sure I know what you're talking about," said the drunk, anachronistic cowboy with amiable smile. "But you best move on, my friend here's the best sharpshooter you've ever seen, and he's got dragons under his skin."

"We've seen," the meerkat said, nodding. He was recovering some of his false charm. "Quite a show. He's quite an archer, but there's not much high ground for him here. And those dragons he carries can't do more then follow the same straight line as an arrow can they?"

Hanzo narrowed his eyes, his glare sharpening until the meerkat with his six friends should have been impaled on it. They were right though. Hanzo couldn’t leave McCree to gain the safety of the rooftops. If he stood his ground here, he could shoot them one at a time, but only if they didn't shoot him first. 

"That's all you know," McCree retorted, still trash talking on Hanzo's behalf. "Anyway what's your spirit guardian? Because in case you missed that little detail, my friend here has dragons the size of a bus and that's on top of some formidable skills. What have you got?"

"45mm Glocks," the meerkat replied. He smiled.

Seven people in the courtyard in front of him drew weapons and Hanzo's hand tightened around McCree's. Stormbow was still slung over his back and he couldn’t fire before these people could. The dragons burned hot and sharp and angry under his skin, the tattoo glowing faintly in useless, growing desperation.

"You two are some of the worst problems we've had to deal with," the meerkat said, smiling and gesturing lightly with his gun. "And that's saying a lot. We're a young organization and you've been violently opposed to us. We're just a supplier rallying to meet demand."

"You're selling folks," McCree cut him off adroitly. He'd turned slightly onto his left side to curl around Hanzo, staring at the seven people surrounding them with his head tipped down over his shoulder. His brown hair was scattered loosely over the pale stone of the bench. "S'called slave trading, trash."

"Supply and demand. We are servants to market forces," the meerkat said primly. "And you are two forces we aren't prepared to suffer any longer. And we've already got a buyer lined up for the cowboy."

"Try and take him from me."

The words tore themselves out from between Hanzo's bared teeth and the dragons roared and burned under his skin. McCree was a helpless, warm, heavy weight at his back and he wasn't going anywhere as long as Hanzo could still breath. It didn't matter that he couldn't get to his bow fast enough to shoot, or that the dragons would only take one or two of these people. Hanzo was drawn tight as a wire and he'd kill them with his teeth if they tried to come for McCree.

"That's right," McCree purred. "Step right up, it's high noon."

Hanzo didn't recognize the words at first, didn't remember why they were important. Then Hanzo noticed that this was the first courtyard in a jungle biome to have a tumbleweed blowing across it.

They were under the red and orange lights of the courtyard, and while McCree was curled around Hanzo, no one seemed to notice that he was glowing as well. Hanzo kept very still, and listened to his own heart thudding in his ears. He let go of McCree's hand.

"It's midnight," the meerkat corrected him. "The hell do you mean it's high n-"

"Draw!"

McCree had kept his right hand under his serape all this time, kept his grip on Peacekeeper and he was a quick draw; he didn't need the time Hanzo did to nock an arrow, draw and shoot. Peacekeeper spoke seven times in the quiet courtyard, McCree lying on his side to fire, both his hands moving fast and sure on his weapon.

Seven bodies dropped dead, and McCree flopped back on the stone bench. Hanzo let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His tattoo was hot to the touch when he absently rubbed his shoulder, trying to sooth the dragons.

"Hell," McCree said, staring up at the sky.

"You carry a six shooter," Hanzo said, looking at seven dead bodies and a tumbleweed.

"You got dragons in your tattoo," McCree retorted. "I ain't special."

"Yes you are," Hanzo snapped, then before he could choke on that admission, plowed on, "How could you even hit them?"

"I can't miss," McCree said. He was still staring up at the stars, like he'd never seen them before.

"You can't stand," Hanzo insisted. Then McCree moved, fast and unnervingly accurate, as he grabbed Hanzo by the front of his yukata and dragged him around. It was the same uncoordinated, brute strength Hanzo had noticed before in the bar, the drugs or the alcohol interfering with McCree's control. Hanzo usually forgot how strong McCree was; he was always so gentle.

"I can't miss," McCree growled.

They were face to face, McCree flat on his back and holding Hanzo over him, forcing him to look down into his eyes. Hanzo was sprawled inelegantly, hands braced on either side of McCree, tense and startled and unwilling to fight the hold McCree had on him. He blinked down, unnerved and surprised and readying himself to pull away.  

McCree delicately put Peacekeeper's muzzle to his right eye. "I can't miss," he repeated.

Hanzo stared. There was a red skull in the centre of McCree's right eye.

Hanzo felt the line of his spine go cold when he saw it, and before he could draw breath or pull away, McCree blinked, and it was gone. He was back to the same brown eyed gunslinger that Hanzo knew.

"Not as fine as dragons," McCree said quietly. He eased his grip on the front of Hanzo's yukata and sighed. "Sorry, should have warned you. Should have... I'm sorry, don't mean to keep putting you off like this."

"You aren't," Hanzo said. He was still staring down at McCree, studying the familiar brown eyes and brown hair and scruffy beard and wide mouth and suddenly he couldn't breath. He was close enough that his hair was trailing down over McCree's temple. "Genji told me you earned that belt buckle."

McCree laughed, and it started Hanzo enough that he jerked back, realizing that McCree had let him go moments earlier and he hadn't made an effort to move.

"He would," McCree chuckled, his head lolling back and forth as he laughed.

Hanzo tensed suddenly, realizing, remembering. "We have to leave."

"Nah, m'tired." McCree had apparently crested his adrenaline high and was falling off the other side. If Hanzo didn't move him, he'd probably fall asleep on this slab of stone with an empty gun in his hand and seven corpses for company.

"McCree, get up." Hanzo pulled him up until he was able to sit.

"Don't think I can, Hanzo," McCree murmured. He shoved Peacekeeper securely back into place and then looked around. He found his hat and held onto it, picking at the split brim. "Maybe not this time."

"I can carry you," Hanzo said, unsure if that was true, but it made McCree blink up at him with his full attention again. Well, Hanzo thought, staring into McCree's eyes, well now you have to carry the heavy bastard. He huffed an irritated sigh and ducked his head as he pulled Stormbow off his shoulder. He turned, and crouched with his back to McCree, "Get up, on my back."

"You sure?" McCree had never in Hanzo's memory sounded less sure.

"People are coming; gunfire isn't so common, McCree," Hanzo snapped instead of answering.

Gingerly, McCree put one hand on Hanzo's shoulder, and carefully shifted his weight by increments onto Hanzo's back. The abrupt carelessness was gone, and the ludicrous delicacy only a drunk could show was firmly in place.

"'M heavy," McCree mumbled, "just go get Winston or..."

"I'm not leaving you," Hanzo said shortly. "Get on. I can carry you."

He settled into place on Hanzo's back, and Hanzo pushed Stormbow into McCree’s hands and hooked his arms under McCree's thighs. He stood carefully, testing his weight and balance to discovered that McCree was a fairly easy weight to bear. It was familiar in a way Hanzo might have expected if he'd given it any thought. He was familiar with most things about McCree.

"Ok?" McCree butted his forehead into the back of Hanzo's head, beside his ponytail.

"Fine," Hanzo said said shortly. He started back towards the Watchpoint. The streets were empty and totally quiet now. Doors that had been open by a crack shut as he glanced at them.

McCree was tense and warm and solid and held Stormbow over Hanzo's chest with careful reverence as if it was a holy object. He was trembling slightly.

"Thanks," McCree murmured. He hung his head over Hanzo's shoulder. "Thanks for coming to get me."

"You didn't need me here," Hanzo replied curtly. McCree's hair was trailing on his bare shoulder and his breath was warm on his neck. "You could have handled it."

McCree just shook his head. "Thanks for coming, partner."

Hanzo hitched McCree a little more firmly into place. "Of course."

"'M not going to remember this tomorrow morning," McCree said. He sounded somehow depressed by the knowledge he was going to forget about a septuple murder of slave traders in self-defense.

"Probably not," Hanzo agreed. "Probably for the..."

He broke off, nearly missing his next step and faceplanting into the sidewalk. McCree had pressed a sleepy, warm kiss into the back of his neck, just a little to one side, right at the edge of his tattoo, and Hanzo felt his heart skip.

"McCree," Hanzo managed very softly. He had nothing to add to that, but it had the effect of making McCree open his mouth against Hanzo's neck, and then his tongue slipped hot and wet against Hanzo's skin and McCree very slowly sucked--

Hanzo's head had tipped to one side, baring his neck and he couldn't breathe. The fact that he was still upright owed a lot to years of intense physical and mental training.

"You're not even going to remember this," Hanzo muttered, and his voice was more strained than he'd been expecting. McCree's teeth set against his skin and Hanzo shuddered.

"Nope," McCree agreed. He had barely put any more distance between them, his lips were moving on Hanzo's skin. "You?"

Hanzo didn't reply. They were nearly back to the little old Opera house Winston had used for a Watchpoint. Nearly to where the others could get McCree patched up, put to rights. Where he'd have to explain that their mission here might well be over.

McCree sighed and nuzzled weakly into Hanzo's neck, his mouth open, and pushed another kiss into his shoulder. It was hot and fast and somehow desperate, and when he pulled back slightly he couldn't raise his head, and instead, nuzzled back over Hanzo's shoulder and subsitted with a shudder.

Hanzo tottered the last few meters to the Watchpoint, his heart racing with goosebumps reeling down his arms. He could feel McCree's eyelashes flutter against his neck. The opera house was dark, and Hanzo walked down the little stone alleyway to the back door while McCree shuddered and lost the tension in his limbs by increments, melting bonelessly against Hanzo's back.

Winston was waiting for him, thankfully. Once they were inside the cluttered, dusty backstage area they used for a briefing room, it took both Ana and Winston to gently peel McCree off Hanzo's back. Hanzo let them, explaining what had happened in brief statements between disentangling McCree's limbs.

"So, he didn't try to pick a fight? You didn't have to subdue him?" Winston asked, totally ignoring the crucial point of Hanzo's description of events, the part about seven dead slave traders in a public courtyard. Instead he looked pleased and interested as he went on, “He wasn’t violent, didn’t struggle or anything?”

"Of course not," Hanzo grunted, he was fighting to keep his voice neutral. He felt suddenly cold without the heavy warmth of McCree on his back. "He could hardly walk without help. McCree, let go."

"No," McCree mumbled, he was fighting to keep awake, trying with increasing desperation gain some footing on what was happening. He was fighting to sit up in Winston's huge arms like a sleepy child and clinging to Hanzo's wrist with the last of his strength. It was a tenacious effort, and clearly one he was invested in. He was usually so amiable and easy going, it was often surprising when his stubbornness became apparent. McCree had the resolve of a ram prepared to starve to death with it's head against a tree.  _ Well one of has to move and it's not going to be me. _

"Nām," Ana said, apparently losing her patience. She shot McCree point blank with her sleep dart and he fell weakly into Winston's arms. His head fell back and his hat fell away and his hand slipped off Hanzo's wrist all at once.

"He's already drunk and drugged," Hanzo snapped, rounding on Ana with more fury than he thought he could possibly feel in the present situation. 

"He's a fighter," Ana said, unruffled. Her single amber eye stared directly into Hanzo's scowl without a flinch. "To most people, he's never so docile. I tried to warn you when he activated his beacon from the bar, but you were already gone. You're lucky he seemed willing to go so quietly with you. You've hardly got a scratch." Her gaze flicked to his bare shoulder and back up and Hanzo tensed and barely stopped himself from reaching up to cover the spot on his neck where McCree's kiss still burned.

"Lucky," Hanzo said flatly, feeling heat rising in his face as he tried to keep eye contact with Ana. It was next to impossible. Ana could win a staring contest with a shark. 

Ana made an approving noise and nodded. "I'll make sure he's alright. Don't worry." She looked back at McCree, cradled in Winston's huge arms and sighed. "Foolish boy."

"It wasn't his fault he was drugged, and he killed seven slave traders," Hanzo snapped, firmly insisting McCree get the credit he was due even if he was snoring gently when he got it. "He ended our mission for us."

"Yes, certainly so. But that is not," Ana looked back at Hanzo with a sweet smile, "what I was referring to."

Hanzo tensed, and this time he didn't managed to stop himself from reaching up to cover his shoulder.

"I'll... Uh, take him to the clinic, Lucio's waiting for him," Winston shifted McCree easily until he was cradled in one arm, and turned towards the dressing room that had been hastily converted to a medical bay.

"I'll follow you," Ana nodded to Hanzo, "Good work. Get some rest."

Hanzo stood stock still while Ana and Winston moved off. He picked Stormbow up off the floor and slung it over his back, then after hesitating for a second, picked McCree's hat up as well. He walked quietly onto the empty stage, with the dusty seats laid out before him left rotting in place, and scaled the wall up to one of the stalls. In the darkness and quiet privacy of the little booth, high up behind the musty old curtains, Hanzo dropped his face into his hands and sat curled around McCree's hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading so far!! I hope you're enjoying. The story will continue with the next chapter posted on Feb. 27.  
> I have been able to update regularly on Mondays, however I have just gotten a job in my field and so this schedule will probably be disrupted! Next Monday's update should be the last chapter of a Roadrat Mermaid au I've been working on, but it may be delayed. Sorry about that. Thank you for your patience and for those job hunting, keep it up!! I'm rooting for you!! (◎｀・ω・´)ゞ  
> If you have any requests or would like to see something more, please let me know! You can ask me anything on [my Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com) or in the comments here. <3  
> This chapter was suggested by the amazing Daishar who tipped me off to the wonders and potential of having McCree drunk and chatty. She was so, so right. And thank you to the wonderful Windlion who helped me beta a bit I was struggling with. Apart from that bit, this work was unbeta'd so all the horribly embarrassing grammar or spelling mistakes are my own fault, and I apologize.
> 
> A podfic by sksninja can be found [here!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his)


	5. It's Not a Date if Someone Dies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edits since publication include:  
> Yep I 100% had the wrong instance down because this was originally going to be the third chapter (whoops)  
> And: Thanks to zawehzaweh who pointed out the correct name for Hanzo's evening wear (WHOOPS) thank you all for your patience!  
> [ART!! Also! Amazing! Art!! Elliephantes on Tumblr did an illustration for this chapter, and please check it out because I damn near died it's really good!!! ](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com/post/158373625374/elliephantes-more-fanart-of-leoandlancer-s)

The forth time Hanzo lost his composure, he put Overwatch out for a frankly alarming amount of money.

He was standing on a stool, in the centre of a small room with good lighting and three mirrors before him at the time. A tidy old man with shiny round glasses had presented his finished efforts and Hanzo was unabashedly delighted. He had to go to a formal ball, at an internationally admired ballet theatre, in celebration of its first performance in ten years. The formal wear that had been made for him were stunning and he felt suitably resplendent in exquisitely patterned silk of unbelievable beauty and elegance.

He studied his reflection in the mirror. The blue of the haori coat contrasted nicely with the brown and cream colours of the inner ones. The layers and layers of finery suited him, it felt like the best possible return to his childhood. He was surrounded by familiar wealth and dressed in layers of exquisite, traditional clothing for the first time in years and was genuinely looking forward to under taking their upcoming mission.

"You look lovely, Hanzo," Mercy knocked once before she came in, and the tailor who had been studying Hanzo's kimono with ferocious proprietary interest paused to smile at her in agreement.

"You as well," Hanzo said, feeling smugly beatific.

Mercy matched him in elegance. She was radiant in a cream and gold ball gown, with sapphires in her tiara. She smiled at him for the compliment.

"Zarya is having her last fitting, her tailor’s weeping from sheer joy and she and her gown are quite startlingly beautiful. I think she's excited to be on her home front again, sometimes I forget she's such a hero to Russia. Satya's finishing as well, and I haven't seen Mei yet."

"And Pharah?" Hanzo was fingering the edges of his haori’s sleeves with loving attention and studying himself in the mirror with unfamiliar delight.

"Actually," Mercy said sweetly.

Hanzo looked around at her just as the door opened, and McCree let himself in.

The grip on his haori’s sleeves went iron hard. Hanzo jerked to rigid attention and his breath caught in his throat.

Shaggy and unshaven and scruffy from a day of travel, McCree stood unfailingly informal in the glorious, traditional opulence of one of Moscow's finest hotels. Jesse McCree looking simply pleased to be there in his holey serape and old stetson hat with the notched brim and his sun stained skin and his windshot hair.

"Howdy," McCree tipped his hat to Hanzo in easy greeting. "I'll be with you for the mission Hanzo. Pharah was pulled off to go with Ana and the others to Argentina. I'm your date."

Hanzo forced himself to stay standing. His neck felt hot with the rapid pressure of his heartbeat and he was clenching his jaw so hard his teeth ached. He carefully reminded himself that he was a trained assassin and he wasn't panicking over seeing McCree for the first time in weeks. He had no reason to keep the guilt twisting in his gut, McCree was on a mission and being his date was simply part of that. There was no reason, Hanzo snarled at himself, to panic.

Mercy and McCree were both watching him. Hanzo dragged himself together with an effort.

"You'll look stunning in her gown," Hanzo said flatly.

McCree immediately ducked his head, hiding below the brim of his hat and huffed out a laugh. "It's quite a gown. I'll be sure I look a treat for you," he glancing up through a grin.

Hanzo felt his heart skip a beat and his breath caught again. McCree peeking at Hanzo from the shade of his hat brim with the little smile was too much for anyone to bear. He suddenly wished to have been the one called to South America, that he was where Pharah was now and she could deal with McCree at the gala tonight.

Then he snarled briefly at the thought of McCree on a date, even a fake one, and another helpless little shot of guilt twisted in his gut like a knife. The hair on the back of his neck had gone up.

He stared balefully at McCree for another second, ignored Mercy's sudden glare entirely, and turned to talk to his tailor about the last minute adjustments.

"I'll... See you tonight then," McCree murmured, ducking his head again.  

Mercy and McCree left, clearly dismissed, and Hanzo managed to take a full breath for the first time since he'd come in.

"I'm sorry," Hanzo said abruptly, interrupting his tailor in mid sentence with real heartfelt sorrow. He could no longer hear Mercy and McCree and he had to make his confession. "I..."

He opened his hands. Archer's hands; trained since childhood to have preternatural strength and dexterity. Strong, fast hands that had been stroking a beautiful, unique, piece of priceless silk when McCree had walked in.

Then told him he was going to be Hanzo's date for the ballet.

Hanzo and the tailor both stared down at the ripped, shredded piece of the sleeve that Hanzo had accidentally torn when McCree had grinned out from under the brim of his hat and offered to look a treat for him.

The tailor looked up from the irreparably torn edge, gazed full up into Hanzo's face, and swore at him with the most respectful eloquence that Hanzo had ever heard.

 

* * *

 

"I thought you were going in blue."

Mercy's greeting wasn't exactly friendly, but that could have just been because Hanzo was so highly strung after a day of self flagellation and almost overwhelming apprehension that everything registered as antagonistic.

"It was hardly planned," He snapped back. The dark midnight blue of the haori had been irreparable, and the tailor, after quietly, thoughtfully and vitriolically cursing Hanzo out until he couldn't breath, used the ruined robe as a pattern to create a new one. He'd finished it about half an hour ago, and it had taken the last shred of silk he'd brought with him from Oshima.

Which was why Hanzo was standing on the wide, brightly lit steps of the Bolshoi Opera House wearing a blazing sunset red haori with gold trim over his dark brown and cream kimono. Mercy looked at him in what might have been disgust.

"Your date won't match," She said coolly, "But don't blame me. I did what I could."

His date. He'd tried, Hanzo had  _ tried  _ not to think about his date. His stomach flipped uncomfortably. He scowled at Mercy and opened his mouth to say something, anything in his own defence.

Zarya and Mei arrived together just in time to keep him from snapping at Mercy. The thrill of excitement that shot through the watching crowd behind the hovering security was enough to distract anyone. Zarya was resplendent in a traditional Russian gown, a silk and pearl studded kokoshnik adding inches to her glorious height. She was a celebrity here, and well dressed people on the red carpet around them flocked to speak with her. Mei was acting as her date for the evening, in a lovely blue and white gown, with wide sleeves and her hair done up in an elegant twist with trailing pink flowers. She and Zarya were holding hands and looking delighted to have been assigned to each other. Ostensibly, Mei and Zarya would bodyguard for one another if a fight broke out.

Hanzo blinked as something blue flashed briefly around Zarya, then Mei. He gave a brief smile as he felt something warm and gentle settle around him as familiar and comforting as a piece of well worn armor. He saw the same flash of blue around Mercy, and turned to find Symmetra climbing the steps towards them, tall and queenly in a indigo and aqua coloured sari, one arm held up with a long train of glorious gold embroidered silk.

"Shield matrix established," She said quietly, "Enjoy the ballet, Hanzo."

"Thank you," Hanzo bowed slightly, then bowed grudgingly to Mercy as she and Satya walked on together towards to open doors of the Bolshoi. Both of them looking like queens among the other incredibly well turned out, but hardly as poised, persons gathered on the red carpet before the huge doors.

"Evening," McCree said. "Shoot, Mercy told me you'd be in silver and blue."

Hanzo turned, steeling himself to find a scruffy, uncomfortable looking cowboy crammed into a suit that looked too elegant for the horrible hat he would have brought along. He was entirely unprepared to find McCree as he was, and only the memory of the scolding his tailor had lashed into him saved his haori this time.

McCree was dressed in a flawlessly bespoke suit, with tails and a steel grey vest. His hair was glossy, falling softly to his shoulders, his beard was neatly trimmed, and he was not, much to Hanzo's amazement, wearing the hat. He was instead wearing over his shoulders, a midnight blue scarf with silver trim, just the colours Hanzo's haori should have been.

"You look pretty as a picture, Hanzo," McCree murmured.

The low voice, and the appreciative look, and this clean, neatly presented version of McCree standing in casual and perfectly poised elegance in his bespoke suit was entirely too much for Hanzo.

He realized he'd been holding his breath and forced himself to exhale, and shut his mouth. He fought the blush creeping up his neck and hoped McCree would think it was simply anticipation for the mission.

"You're lovely in red I mean," McCree smiled, just a little uncertainly, the expression not quite as genuine as Hanzo had come to expect. "Ain't that something, we switched colours."

Hanzo's blinked and swallowed, his mouth dry. He was in red and brown and gold, McCree in black and blue and silver.

"Surprising that you're managing without your hat," Hanzo said, a beat too late for polite conversation. Hanzo could hardly breath, his mind was racing frantically trying to come to terms with this new McCree. He'd changed so much and yet somehow, the same easy grace was still so comfortingly noticeable. McCree looked as natural and poised in a several thousand dollars worth of tailoring as he did in his old armor and serape.

He was still Hanzo's McCree. The thought dropped into Hanzo's gut and it was a comforting realization and an intimidating one. He still smelled of sage, and his smile was still warm and familiar. He still watched Hanzo with the same direct, unaffected admiration, just a little hesitantly, standing a little further away than a date would.

"Mercy hid it on me, she's never forgiven me for turning up to an UN fancy pants recognition and shiny awards ceremony with it. Had to be twenty years ago now." McCree smiled, and it was just slightly forced, maybe shy.

Hanzo only noticed his hesitance because he was used to noticing everything about McCree. And after not seeing him in weeks, found he couldn't look away now. He couldn't stop cataloguing everything about him. He couldn't find anything to say, and the silence dragged on between them, too long to be anything but rude.

"Listen, Hanzo, I know this ain't the best time," McCree said, and now the smile was definitely forced, and the anxious tension around his eyes was real. He stopped and swallowed and glanced aside, ducking his head in the same self conscious gesture Hanzo knew well. He must have forgotten for an instant that he didn't have a hat brim to hide behind, because suddenly his expression was naked with anxious hopelessness.  

Hanzo felt the same vicious twist of guilt in his gut again.

"Just wanted to say how sorry I am, about our last mission together." McCree looked up, straight into Hanzo's eyes, and seemed to hesitate before going on, "I'm not exactly an easy drunk, don't remember much after I hit my distress beacon but I know you got me back to the Watchpoint, so I don't know if i gave you any trouble and I just..."

"No," Hanzo snapped.

McCree blinked at him, taken aback by the brusque interruption.

They started at each other. All around them, well dressed people and the occasional omnic made their way past them up to the huge columns before the open doors. The crowd's only unifying factor was a love of the arts and a common impatience with the proletariat population. And an ignorance that an attack by Talon agents was already underway inside.

Hanzo forcibly hauled himself back to the present. They were on a mission. "There's no need to apologize," Hanzo said briefly. "You weren't... You didn't..." He shut his mouth before he started stuttering over his explanations. The little red mark McCree had left on his neck had long faded, but suddenly Hanzo could feel it burn. He swallowed hard.

"You left before I woke up," McCree said quietly.

There wasn't a shred of accusation in his words or tone, but Hanzo glanced away this time, the guilt in his gut finding familiar ground to drag him over.

"I thought I might have, I don't know, given you some trouble," McCree went on when Hanzo didn't look back at him.

"You didn't," Hanzo managed. He could still feel the scuff of McCree's beard on his bare skin. Could remember with perfect clarity the weight and warmth of McCree on his back. Could remember the heat of his open mouth. Hanzo couldn't keep his expression in check and damned himself by looking down to avoid McCree's gaze.

McCree just watched him, silent as the cream of the international bourgeoisie shuffled past them like kids heading to the lunch lady. They were a little island in a stream of figures in bespoke tailoring and fine jewelry who cast admiring glances at McCree.

"My taking this mission was nothing to do with you." Hanzo lied, and forced himself to look back up, wrestling his expression into cool neutrality.

McCree just nodded, and the now familiar chagrin and resignation Hanzo had been dreading flicked over McCree's face. He looked tired with it, more than resigned maybe, and it dropped the tension from his wide shoulders.

Hanzo caught himself reaching for McCree and stopped himself with a jerk. He stared at his right hand, held between them, and at the bright red and gold edge of his haori sleeve. "We have a mission," Hanzo said, and forced himself to take McCree's arm with as much casual aplomb as he could fake.

McCree moved automatically to hold his arm out to Hanzo with easy grace. "Sure," he murmured. "Talon at the ballet, planning a hostage taking."

Hanzo nodded, and together, they turned and began their walk up to the golden light of the Bolshoi's open doors and the queue of people waiting to be let in.

"You don't," Hanzo started, then hesitated, hearing what he'd been about to say and feeling like he'd charged into a minefield. He stepped up as the line moved before them and forced himself to go on quietly, "You don't remember anything after I arrived to get you?"

McCree glanced at Hanzo briefly, then looked back up at the uniformed security and ticket takers two couples ahead of them in line between the columns before the doors. "Not much," he said. He seemed to have recovered his easy self possession, and looked as amiably inscrutable as he ever did on a mission. He was lying though, Hanzo was almost certain.

"Shizuoka Masanari," McCree presented Hanzo when they arrived at the doors. He smiled and held out their tickets, white cards with red trim and a QR code in gold in it's centre. "And I'm Joel."

"Joel," The security asked, leaving the syllable hanging.

"Joel Shizuoka," McCree said, smiling up at the ticket taker and security, "His husband."

Hanzo made a tiny noise before he choked himself into silence, and shot a haughty glare up at the security when he glanced down in alarm.

A little hologram of Hanzo and McCree popped up from the gold QR codes when the ticket taker touched them, and she nodded to them both. "Mr and Mr Shizuoka, welcome to tonight’s performance of Swan Lake."

"Much obliged," McCree smiled and tucked the two tickets back into the inside pocket of his coat.

Hanzo hung onto McCree, feeling a little like a balloon on a string, and let himself be led over the stone steps and into the white and gold marble of the entryway.

"Husbands?" Hanzo managed as the brilliant lights and lively chatter and overall wonder of the marble entry way could cover for his voice if it shook a little.

"Mercy's idea," McCree said, looking around at the white walls with gilded, elaborately carved trim. "Thought boyfriend was a little juvenile for us. We've been married five years now, spring wedding in Hirosaki."

"I hope the weather was fine," Hanzo grunted. His chest felt tight and he had to remind himself to breath. He found he was leaning into McCree as they climbed up the wide white stairs to a landing. There was a mirror at the head of the stairs on the landing, reflecting the light and brilliant gold and shining chandeliers around them, and Hanzo and McCree, side by side in it's centre.

_ Pretty as a picture _ , McCree had said and he'd been right. Hanzo missed his next step when he was confronted with their reflections. McCree looked downright dashing in the charcoal and dove grey suit, the blue and silver scarf looking richly elegant over his shoulders. He was so tall and neat and handsome, but still slightly wild, as though some edge to him couldn't be softened down by pretty clothing or golden gilt at the edges of the room. Something about him that made people look at him twice. 

Hanzo barely managed to stop himself staring and forced himself to move on with the flow of people around to the next flight of steps up to the reception chamber. McCree seemed to start when Hanzo moved, and hastily followed him. He had hesitated in front of the mirror too.

"Sure was, and the cherry trees were in bloom," McCree went on with what he'd been saying before, sounding just slightly winded.

"Of course," Hanzo said dourly. It sounded nice though, he'd like to see McCree during the cherry blossom festivals. He sternly shoved that thought aside.

"Other then that, same story you were going to use with Pharah as your date applies," McCree murmured, leaning into Hanzo slightly to keep his voice low. Which wasn't strictly necessary. The room was crowded with people, talking and laughing and showing off their jewels and pearls and fine clothes. There were five chandeliers overhead in the high room, and the ceiling was painted with scenes of famous ballets, operas and plays. McCree and Hanzo were not the most interesting thing to pay attention to.

They both paused, hesitating to wade into the bright, opulent, finely dressed melee of the reception.

"Listen Hanzo," McCree started softly, and the hesitation in his voice was too much.

"Don't," Hanzo cut him off. If McCree started talking about the last time they'd seen each other, weeks ago, before Hanzo had stormed into Winston’s workshop and damn near demanded to be reassigned, Hanzo wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Well now I just want," McCree started, talking fast as though already knowing Hanzo wouldn't let him finish. He stopped himself before Hanzo could, and stepped forward towards the glittering crowd.

His arm was stiff with tension under Hanzo's hand, and Hanzo swallowed hard, and followed him. The guilt he'd been getting good at ignoring felt like a pillory.

He could see Zarya, under the greatest of the chandeliers in the centre of the room, a head taller than the admiring crowd around her. she was looking down beside her, beaming at Mei, probably, who Hanzo couldn't catch a glimpse of. There was no sign of Mercy or Symmetra, though they'd been warned by Winston to keep a low profile and not mingle with each other. They were somewhere in the crowd presumably, and Hanzo tried to force himself to focus. They were on a mission.

The people at the reception cast admiring glances at McCree as they made their way through the crowd towards the centre of the room, and Hanzo grit his teeth and tried not to let it bother him. Within seconds of making that resolution, he failed it, and instead, settled into his coldest, most austere expression as if it was a bunker.

"Easy," McCree murmured, "you're glaring fit to take paint off the wall."

Hanzo glared at him instead.

"You're in love with me," McCree said, nodding politely to a smiling duchess while Hanzo suffered a minor cardiac arrest, "We're husbands."

"I hope I was wise enough to take out a lucrative insurance policy," Hanzo hissed.

McCree snorted, and his arm lost some of the tension he'd been carrying.

At the centre of the room was a massive round table, with a glorious array of fresh fruit and fondue and flowers and an ice statue of a swan with it's wings spread and its long neck raised. McCree whistled admiringly and immediately helped himself to a napkin full of fruit and chocolates. Hanzo stared at the lavish spread, and picked up a few strawberries to at least look like he was enjoying himself and not, in fact, suffering cardiac dysthymia.

A hovering waiter with a tray crested through the throng and proffered drinks at them, Hanzo took a flute of champagne and watched with interest as McCree shook his head.

"You think you can bring me soda water and lime?"

"Certainly sir," The waiter replied and floated off.

"Waste of time if you ask me," a man with a white, square trimmed beard and the dress uniform of an admiral was cheerfully loading a napkin with pastries and chocolate covered fruit. "The rivers of champagne this place has is quality from pop to flat and you, sir, are missing out on a good thing."

"Leaves more for the rest of you all," McCree rejoined cheerfully. "Take it as my civic duty for the day."

"I salute you," the admiral said graciously, too busy loading on sweets to actually salute. He had masterfully constructed walls and buttresses of barquillos and lady fingers to drastically increase his carrying capacity. Hanzo was watching him load it with tea cakes, pasteles and profiteroles in mute admiration.

"You two hiding from your wives?" The admiral went on, then without waiting for a reply plowed on, "I am. Old gal scares me stiff times like these. Battle ready and so much to do. Too much high blood and excitement in a room."

He'd topped his fortress of sweets with a cream tart, several chocolate covered strawberries and a rose of sculpted ice cream. Hanzo was slightly in awe. He was holding a heap of sweets the size of a watermelon in one hand.

"My sympathies are with you admiral but this here's my husband," McCree slipped an arm around Hanzo's back.

Hanzo started, and snapped his attention from the metric kilogram of pastries in the classic, battle ready star shaped fortress formation in the admiral's hand and onto McCree. He nodded as gracefully as he could manage.

"Ah! Well of course you do look like a handsome couple. Suited for each other don't you know, there's always a look when it's love. Should have spotted it. Ah, there she is now," The admiral moves a few degrees around the round table, scooping up a chocolate tart and ramming it into his mouth.

A woman in a general's dress uniform with stars on her collar was cleaving through the finely dressed people on all sides and heading directly for them. Hanzo wondered if he could climb up the statue of the swan in formal attire before she reached them but hesitated, unwilling to leave McCree.

"There you are, thank heaven, I hoped I would find you here. That wonderful Dame Hannah's here and her gown is divine, she's brought your friend Tess. Oh good evening," She nodded to McCree and Hanzo, noticing them and accepting the cream tart from the fortress of sweets her husband offered here. "Thank you love you saved me my favorite. Come along if you've armoured up enough sweets to avoid unwanted conversation." She rammed the cream tart into her mouth with the same practiced elegance of her husband and nodded to McCree and Hanzo again. "Good evening," She said with only slightly muffled diction.

"Gentlemen," The admiral said, following his wife. They were both snaking out of the fortress of sweets in his hand.

"Amazing," McCree remarked.

Hanzo grunted in agreement, and carefully didn't move. He didn't want to give McCree any incentive to pull his arm back.

"Thank you," McCree said, accepting his soda and lime from the waiter, who had been hovering unobtrusively while McCree and Hanzo had both been absorbed in the general and admiral.

The champagne was good, and Hanzo was so taken aback he stared down into his flute after his first absent minded sip. He downed the rest, replaced the glass on the same waiter’s tray and took another, briefly thanking him as he paused.

"Zarya and Mei are coming around, should keep moving," McCree murmured.

Hanzo nodded, and they waded carefully into the delighted, chattering crowd of the rich and lovely. McCree received more admiring glances, and Hanzo found himself channeling his irritation into haughty austerity, glaring down anyone who let their gaze linger. It worked fairly well until a young lord or other with black curly hair met the glare and smiled up into it.

"Good evening, would you care to join us?" There were five of them, attractive men and women in their thirties, ruthlessly well dressed and watching them both with predatory interest.

"No," Hanzo said curtly just as McCree said "Well sure that's nice of you."

The five young members of the european peerage blinked then grinned.

"Don't be shy," one of the woman said, smiled broadly and holding her champagne in one dazzlingly jeweled hand. "It's always lovely to meet new people."

Hanzo grunted and McCree smiled straight back down at her.

"Sure is," McCree murmured. His hand slid around Hanzo's waist again and pulled them close together. "Lovely party, looking forward to the performance?"

"Of course," the dark haired young lord, with diamonds in his tie pin, shrugged, "And there's always such good company. Tell me, will you be seated in the flights or lords?

Hanzo looked blank and McCree saved him, "Stalls, we have a box in the second balcony. Private box." He said the last phrase with a little twist that Hanzo hadn't heard him use before.

"Private," The five peerage looked a little surprised, "Well, that's a luxury."

"Sure is and we're grateful for it," McCree said and Hanzo nodded.

"My husband and I prefer to watch such performances in peace," Hanzo said, lancing one man through with a glare as he looked McCree up and down appreciatively.

"Of course, I would," One of them muttered.

Hanzo was grateful Mercy had chosen to dub them husbands, there was something weighty about the term that was wonderfully discouraging. Hanzo smiled thinly as three people markedly lost interest in them. The two remaining were watching Hanzo carefully.

"How very modern," One of the men remarked, watching Hanzo, "No wedding bands."

"No, we thought that a little old fashioned. Now if you'll excuse us," McCree said, and turned them both so that he put himself between Hanzo and the last two of the group as yet undiscouraged. "Enjoy the ballet."

Hanzo nodded at the group, and walked on with McCree stuck to his side, beginning a slow circle of the room as the first of the attendees began making their way to their seats before the performance. 

McCree finished his sweets and Hanzo finished his second champagne and didn't ask if Mcree wanted to join him for a third.

"They're following," Hanzo said in quiet Japanese, catching a glimpse of three of the well dressed group they'd just left trailing after them like a couple of hopeful scavengers.

"Shouldn't have told them we had a stall," McCree muttered, "Now they'll try to join us. They don't buy that we're married."

Hanzo grunted. Then tensed slightly, a thought occurring to him, and slowed slightly to put his third glass of unfinished champagne down on the tray of a passing waiter.

"Still following?" Hanzo murmured, he was doing his best to look active in the current goings on, unbothered by their bold new opportunistic tail.

"Yeah," McCree sighed. "Persistent damn..."

"Kiss me," Hanzo said, cutting him off and barely managing to force the words out.

McCree made a noise that might have been made by a big man choking on nothing but his tongue and a mouthful of air and tightened his arm around Hanzo's waist.

"If they think we're not married and..." Hanzo said, waspish at himself and annoyed at the situation and unwilling to back down because it made sense, damn it, then McCree cut him off.

The kiss was brief, and warm, and it was just on Hanzo's cheek, at the corner of his mouth, so soft it felt more intimate than he'd expected and his breath caught.

Hanzo blinked and let out a long breath as McCree pulled back slightly, but kept himself close, nuzzling Hanzo's head gently.

"They still trailing after us?" McCree murmured into Hanzo's ear.

"I have no idea," Hanzo replied with flat honesty.

"Come on, let's just head to our seats," McCree pulled away slowly, looking the part, keeping himself close. 

Hanzo had to stop himself from reaching after him. He nodded, and let McCree lead them to the wide red carpeted stairwell up to the second floor, and down the curving, red walled corridor where beautifully uniformed attendants checked their tickets and ushered them on.

A locked door on the far left side of the flight opened when McCree pressed the white and gold tickets to the key panel, and Hanzo let out a sigh of relief as he found himself in a light, lushly furnished eerie. There were red velvet curtains on hanging down above the rail, and there were four unreasonably comfortable looking chairs arranged looking down and sideways at the stage. They were almost overtop of the orchestra pit, close enough to the stage that Hanzo could pick out individual pieces of mahogany on the parquette.

McCree whistled appreciatively, and touched the pad by the door to kill the lights inside their box.

"If you don't mind, just makes it easier to see out," McCree explained.

The dimness suited Hanzo, as did the height, and the vantage point. And the choice of company. It was the same height above the wide field of floor seating that the rainy London street had been, all those weeks ago. Hanzo remembered suddenly, in a stab of surprisingly poignant memory, the feel and warmth of McCree's serape around his shoulders.

They sat a little awkwardly, Mccree leaning forward with his arms crossed on the gilded rail, Hanzo sitting with his hands in his lap, trying to bully himself into calm.

"McCree," Hanzo said, and started himself. He hadn't meant to say anything.

McCree looked around at him, then sat up, and he frowned, something in Hanzo's face made him suddenly lean forward slightly, as though worried. "Hanzo? You’ve gone all pale."

Hanzo looked up at the handsome, familiar features of a man he'd left lying trembling and unconscious in Gibraltar weeks ago. He'd missed McCree. He'd gone to Winston without sleeping and without hesitation to demand to be on the shuttle leaving for Moscow. He hadn't unpacked his bag or eaten between coming off one mission and starting this one. And McCree had woken up alone in Gibraltar, to the news that Hanzo had left without saying a word.

McCree moved slowly, making his intention's plain, giving Hanzo plenty of time to move if he wanted to. Hanzo stayed very still, and McCree gently took his hand.

"Listen, please Hanzo I have to know," McCree said after a few minutes. His hand around Hanzo's was too loose to be anything but a plea, "Hanzo did I do anything... I must have, when you had to take me back to the Watchpoint during the last mission. Please Hanzo I'm sorry."

Hanzo was staring at McCree's hand around his wrist, at the buttons of his waistcoat, the bolo tie and the silver ram's head clasp and McCree's pulse beating visibly hard and fast at his throat. Hanzo shut his eyes briefly. "No," He heard himself speak and swallowed, forcing the tremor out of his voice. "You didn't do anything... upsetting."

"You left so sudden," McCree said and there was some hurt that he'd been able to hide before but not now. Hanzo hated that he'd made himself such a coward. "I must have done something. I don't remember what and I don't have a mind to but Hanzo, I just want to be your partner again."

The familiar term rolling easy and quick off McCree's tongue kicked Hanzo in the gut with sudden emotion. He'd missed McCree, and didn't deserve him.

"I shouldn't have left," Hanzo realized. The weight of the guilt that he'd been carrying suddenly had its source and Hanzo hadn't realized how much it had been weighing on him.

"What's that?" McCree blinked at him.

Hanzo hesitated, then moved fast, before he could stop himself. He caught McCree's right hand in both of his, and held on, anchoring himself before going on. "I shouldn't have left before you woke up."

McCree stayed quiet. Somewhat of a relief, and somewhat irritating, he seemed to have learned that Hanzo could fight his way through these words if given enough time. He gently turned his hand in Hanzo's grip though, and held on a little tighter.

"What do you remember," Hanzo said, and bullied himself to look up at McCree instead of at the little silver ram at his throat. 

"You know when I'm lying, don't you," McCree said slowly.

Hanzo hesitated, then nodded. He didn't always, but often enough. He studied McCree enough to know.

From their quiet little stall, the excited chatter from the other patrons on the walls around them and from the floor sounded a little like the sea beating up the beach. The shining golden light from the massive chandelier hanging from the hugely tall ceiling looked like a glittering sun. In the relative dimness around them, Hanzo had never felt like he'd been alone with McCree like this, it was just the two of them, not just agents shoved by chance into the same mission.

"It's all fuzzy, more towards the end. I remember you came to get me, told the others at the bar to back off," McCree admitted slowly. His thumb was brushing back and forth over the back of Hanzo's hand. "Talked about stars I think, you wouldn't let me swim in the fountain." He paused to bully his grin down at the memory and Hanzo caught himself smiling. "Slave traders we'd been hunting followed us, you wouldn't leave, told them to try and take me from you."

"I did," Hanzo remembered that clearly. The visceral terror at the thought of McCree being taken from him still woke him at night. He looked down at their joined hands, and his hands tightened on McCree's.

"I killed them all with Dead Eye. Showed you the mark." McCree paused, apparently waiting for Hanzo to comment on the terrifying little red skull staring out from McCree's right eye.

Hanzo just nodded. He couldn't look up.

"You carried me piggyback when I couldn't get up, I remember that, but that seems like a dream. I wouldn't have believed it if Ana hadn't told me. Brought me back to the watchhouse in the Opera theatre."

Hanzo should be watching McCree more carefully. In case he was lying, deliberately leaving out parts of the story. McCree was quiet for a beat too long, and Hanzo's chest went tight when he went on.

"Think I kissed you," McCree said softly.

Hanzo swallowed, his mouth had gone dry and the spot on his right shoulder felt the ghost of McCree's beard, the heat of his open mouth again.

"I did," McCree said, sounding stunned.

Hanzo looked up sharply, tensing because McCree hadn't been sure, not really, and Hanzo had told him. McCree looked sheepish and stunned and mortified and there was a lot of words piling up at the tip of Hanzo's tongue he just couldn't get any of them out fast enough.

"I... Hanzo... I'm really..." McCree dropped his gaze, "I'm know I'm not... I'm really sorry, I didn't mean..."

Suddenly Hanzo felt McCree tugging his hands back, pulling away and cringing back with the familiar resignation. The heartbreak he carried as easily as everything else. Hanzo's grip tightened so suddenly McCree started.

"Don't," Hanzo snapped.

They stared at each other in baffled, loaded silence for seconds on end while the happy crowd around them chattered on and gold light filtering into the dimness of their booth made the tawny flecks in McCree's eyes glow. Hanzo forced himself to relax his grip. Archer's hands, he reminded himself sternly, strong enough to tear silk. He wasn't going to hurt McCree.

"Ana said you're a fighter when you're drunk," Hanzo hear himself say. "Is that true?"

"Yeah," McCree blinked at him, the tension in his shoulders meant he's shed his resignation, but the anxious jumble of hope and confusion and apprehension in his face was almost worse. He wasn't schooling his expressions, he'd accepted that Hanzo knew when they were fake. "Yeah, it's why I hoped you'd come since I knew I wouldn't, well, I knew I'd never hurt you."

He instantly looked like he regretted his choice of words, and Hanzo's hands tightened around his again. He swallowed.

"I thought you were clingy and affectionate to anyone when you were drunk," Hanzo said.

McCree suddenly looked stricken. "Oh," He said, suddenly looking at Hanzo with the bleak, thousand yard stare of a man who'd had a perfectly reasonable excuse and thrown it merrily away.

"You said you were some discarded outlaw with wild aspirations of heroism," Hanzo pressed himself on. He felt winded. His hands would have been trembling if he wasn't holding on to McCree so tightly. He had to get these words out before he stopped himself. He had never been able to talk like this. He was exerting himself in strange new ways for McCree. "I told you you weren't."

"I thought I'd imagined that," McCree said quietly. He'd gone very still before Hanzo.

"You didn't," Hanzo felt like he was way out on a frozen pond and the only thing keeping the ice from breaking was McCree. "You held my hand and kissed my neck, and you didn't want to forget."

"I'm not like that when I'm drunk," McCree said carefully after a moment, "I'm just like that around you."

And Hanzo let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and eased his grip just slightly on McCree's hand.

"I asked Pharah to trade with me," McCree said, and Hanzo looked up, a little bewildered by the change in topic. "I was going on the Argentina mission and I asked to take her place here a few days ago. I wanted to see you again, and I uh..." He glanced aside, suddenly slightly flushed, "I didn't want her taking you out on a date."

Hanzo's mouth fell open at he stared at McCree. He couldn't bully any words out and McCree went on.

"Especially not if I could instead."

Hanzo shut his mouth and looked down, a little startled as McCree's left hand settled gently over Hanzo's, keeping them in place.

"Good," Hanzo said softly. He felt the tension shudder out of his shoulders and forced his hands to relax again. He stared dumbly at their joined hands and realized that the golden light outside their little stall had dimmed and the chatter from the crowd was slowly dying. He could hear his own heart beating in the silence that followed.

"Yeah? This is good?" McCree's hands were perfectly still, he was watching Hanzo with naked hope and apprehension.

Hanzo had a brief, high stakes internal conflict while a Russian voice on the stage below them introduced the ballet and the conductor, and thanked them all for their attendance. Hanzo barely heard a word of the address. He wouldn't have let go of McCree or looked away from him if Talon had attacked the audience with a bazooka. His sensibility and responsibilities and his natural inclination for solitude had ganged up with over twelve years of self loathing and exile and were fighting to suppress a young, unfamiliar and troubling new hope in his chest. He wanted McCree, wanted him to be happy, more than he needed to maintain his composure.

"Yes," Hanzo managed quietly. It was dark inside their booth, and totally quiet in the moments before the conductor raised his baton.

"Well," McCree said with soft wonder as cool blue light began to filter down onto the stage and the slow opening bar of Swan Lake's prologue rose up. "Well don't that beat all."

They watched Swan Lake on the stage where it had first been performed almost 200 years ago.

Hanzo didn't realize until the end of the first act, after sitting spellbound at the dancers and the soaring music and the lights, that he and McCree hadn't let go of each other. They didn't leave their booth over the intermission, just sat quietly without speaking, leaning towards each other with their hands clasped together, and stayed that way all the time they watched the ballet. They only reluctantly let go then the dancers had taken their final poises, and the music had ended, to join in the tumultuous ovation as the curtains rose for the troupe's bows.

He learned much later that evening that Talon had, in fact, been at the ballet house in force, but Satya and Mercy had quietly executed them on their own without incident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my very first attempt at one of my favorite tropes. I hope you enjoyed! Next chapter should be up this Thursday, March 2, but if I'm a little late I apologize! I have a new job which is thrilling but undeniably disruptive to writing. Thank you for your patience.  
> aaaand Happy Birthday to AranGondor ٩(•̤̀ᵕ•̤́๑)૭✧ hope it's a good one~  
> If you have any comments or requests, please let me know! Or come chat! You can find me on [my Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com)!  
> Chapter was beta'd by the wonderful Daishar who puts up with my asking damn dumb questions at all hours <3
> 
> A podfic by sksninja can be found [here!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his)


	6. Environmental Devastation Wasn't Their Intention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sidles in two weeks late for this update* Please note the change in tags!  
> Thank you for your patience! I have started a brand new job that I've been working towards for many years and I'm super happy there! It's cut my free time down quite a good deal, and I'm also moving, boxing up my stuff and trying to rent a storage locker etc. I may have bitten off more than I can chew. But I hope you enjoy this! It was really great to sit down and finally finish. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed writing this, and thank you so much to those who have read it and left kudos and/or commented! Your encouragement and enthusiasm has meant more than I could say, even with another two weeks, and fifty comma splices. <3 For now, I hope you enjoy!

The fifth time Hanzo lost his composure, he kissed McCree until they were both breathless and decided composure was vastly overrated. 

Hanzo was struggling to stay conscious when he was dragged down a stone corridor. He heard a lock click open, and a metal door shriek on it’s hinges and he felt blood drip off his chin and heard it spatter on the floor. He barely got a hand out as he was hauled into a tiny, dark doom, and didn’t get any purchase on whatever he’d managed to touch. He hit the stone floor hard when he was dumped unceremoniously inside. It was dark, and cold, and it was probably under the lake; Hanzo could hear water dripping down the walls and trickling into the grate in the floor.

He hadn't been able to find McCree.

The thought made him turn his face down, against the damp stone of the floor and his hands closed into fists. McCree was here somewhere, and Hanzo had fought his way onto the recovery team along with Soldier, Mercy, Pharah, Junkrat and Roadhog. And he’d failed. McCree could be dead by now. He could have died waiting for someone, anyone, to come and find him.

He drifted, thoughts and nightmares and memories sliding past him without waiting for his examination or attention. He was bleeding onto the stones and couldn't draw breath without pain. There was blood in his mouth and his mind kept insistently presenting him with solutions to problems or disasters that had happened long ago. 

He should have stayed with the team. That was the thought that finally prompted a sliver of attention. He'd fought to go on this mission, argued with Winston and snapped at Widowmaker and told them he was going to the last place anyone had seen McCree with or without a team. He'd been allowed to come, cautioned by nearly everyone in Overwatch, and sat furious and silent through the flight here. A short flight, it wasn’t far to the place where McCree's beacon had sent a distress signal shortly before it had gone offline.

Hanzo should have stayed with the team. He was never as effective on attack as he was on defence and here, in unfamiliar territory, he needed the support of the other five with him. But Roadhog and Soldier were slow at climbing the mountainside, and Hanzo wasn’t. Mercy had flown up to him, over and over during their day’s travels, telling him to wait for the others to catch up, but Hanzo hadn’t listened. He needed to look for McCree, any trace of him. Needed to go on ahead more than he needed a team with him. 

The beacon had gone up in a little ghost town on the hillside beside a dammed lake. It had been gutted by fire when Hanzo arrived, the buildings still smouldering. Hanzo had picked his way over the fresh snow and embers through the smoke with his heart hammering against his ribs. McCree had been here, in the middle of what had to have been an inferno.  Hanzo was standing with his hands clenched on his bow in the place where McCree’s beacon had gone off when the first bullet hit him. 

It had taken three people to bring him down. They were probably ex-military of some description, in shoddy patched armor with oversized weapons. He'd killed two of them, and wounded a third, but then more had come. Hanzo had lost his grip on his bow, and couldn't stop them from dogpiling him, as his attackers had rapidly learned by trial and error that as long as he could move, he would hurt them. 

They’d tied his wrists together and hung him from a tree branch to beat him without much skill, but with the casual enthusiasm that comes to those who learned violence as a first language. Hanzo had only spoken in Japanese, hadn't offered his name and had listened in feigned confusion through pain and his rasping breath as his captors spoke candidly around him.

They wanted Junkrat, and they wanted Roadhog, and they mentioned another captive who hadn't talked either.

So maybe Hanzo had almost found McCree. Maybe he wasn't ash and fire blasted bone in the ruins of the town around him.

Regardless, Hanzo was in no position to get either of them out of here. He shut his eyes a little tighter and curled in on himself.

He missed the Watchpoint. It was a strange thought, and one that caught him sufficiently off guard to impress itself upon him. He missed Gibraltar's mountains, the sunshine and the heat and the laboratory and workshops. He missed the surprisingly easy routine and the work he was doing, he missed the casual company of the others. Missed sitting on the roof of the communication building with Genji at night. Missed the easy conversations with McCree.

"Hanzo?"

Missed McCree's voice. Hanzo missed a lot of things about McCree. Somewhere in the fog of pain and cold, he heard his cell door shriek and then shut again, the lock clicked shut.

"Hanzo!"

He hadn't realized how cold he was until a warm hand cupped his cheek. The smell of smoke and sage and well worn leather washed over him, and something warm and heavy and soft dropped over him. Someone was moving him, insistently pulling him around and up, McCree's voice hissing oaths and promises and pleas and curses. Hanzo's ribs hurt, his breath was shallow and he knew he was going to die like this, going to die because this was the cold that could kill.

He was gently pulled up to sit, and the pain in his ribs made him shy away from consciousness. 

"You're ok," McCree's soft voice in his ear, warm breath on his ear and down his neck. "You'll be ok, Hanzo, please wake up."

Hanzo was sitting up, leaning with his back against something solid and warm, soft hair tickling his face and a blanket draped over him. He felt pinned, confined in a way that should have made him anxious. He just felt grateful though, grateful and warm and it eased the ache in his ribs and let him breath a little easier.

"Hanzo," McCree's voice in his ear again, soft as a breath.

Without meaning to, Hanzo turned his face and found worn flannel and soft hair and warm skin under his cheek, and he nuzzled blindly into it.

"You're ok," McCree's voice had a little hitch in it as he spoke, "We're ok."

Categorically,  _ empirically  _ untrue, Hanzo thought. He should feel pinned, he kept thinking that, someone was sitting with Hanzo against their chest, holding him with both arms, and Hanzo should have felt trapped. He didn’t though, he was was warmer, and huffed a little sigh that ruffled the soft, sage and smoke hair that fell over his cheek.

"Hanzo," McCree was pleading with him, his arms were shaking slightly, trembling and that was odd, since surely metal prosthetics shouldn't be able to tremble when their users were scared.

Hanzo managed to find a scrap of lucid thought. Enough to realize he was sitting up against McCree's chest with McCree's mismatched arms holding the red serape over him. He had his head tipped against McCree's shoulder, nuzzled into his neck.

McCree was here. Hanzo had found him.

Hanzo jerked and gasped. Moving too fast, breathing too hard and his ribs suddenly went red with pain.

"It's ok! It's just me, Hanzo, it's McCree, please, hold still you're hurt, please, sorry I'm sorry," McCree babbled out, tensing  because he didn't want to pin Hanzo but couldn't let him go and didn't want to risk hurting him and Hanzo could hardly breath.

"McCree," Hanzo shuddered, shaking his head briefly and fighting for breath. "Good. You're alive, that's..." Hanzo felt his strength fail him in increments. Then suddenly he dropped back, weak as a kitten, his body finally failing to obey him. "...that's good."

McCree's breath caught, and his arms closed tentatively around Hanzo's chest again, pulling the red serape a little more firmly over him. Hanzo blinked and tried to get his thoughts in order, had to tell McCree that the others were here, that help was coming.

"Yeah," McCree murmured softly, "I'm alright Hanzo."

Very gently, he nuzzled his chin against Hanzo's temple. Hanzo blindly turned towards the touch, and pushed his face in against McCree's neck again. He reached up and put his hands around McCree's wrists, holding his arms a little tighter.

"I'm sorry," Hanzo whispered. He had to get that out, had to tell McCree because he was dying right now and it was his own damn fault and McCree was going to be the one suffering it. "I'm so sorry McCree."

"No," McCree's voice was soft, he'd tipped his face over and around, moving to shelter Hanzo. His hair was soft and the hat made the darkness warm and still. "No don't be sorry. You did right, I know the others are coming. Just hold on a little longer."

"Should have stayed with them," Hanzo murmured, "Shouldn't have gone alone."

"It's alright," McCree insisted, his hands tightened briefly into fists over Hanzo's chest, pulling him a little more firmly against his chest. "I know you came to find me, I’d have done just the same. It won't matter none when the others get here."

"Wanted to find you," Hanzo's words surprised him, he only voiced them in the privacy of his own head, and now he was voicing them to McCree. "Had to find you."

McCree let out a breath that ghosted soft and slow and warm over Hanzo's neck. "Hanzo," He started, and his arms had gone still over Hanzo's chest.

Hanzo could feel McCree's heartbeat on his back. They’d taken McCree’s armor, and there was just flannel and silk between them.

"I'm sorry," Hanzo said, and again, his own words surprised him. He was talking before he could think of what he was saying, why he was saying it.

"Don't be," McCree whispered, and his arms tightened again. McCree's thighs tensed and drew in slightly, cradling Hanzo closer, pulling him a little more firmly into himself.

Hanzo would have felt trapped if anyone else had held him like this, but Hanzo just sighed out a breath of relief and kissed the scruffy edge of McCree's jaw without knowing why.

"Hanzo," McCree said very softly, and he had never sounded fragile before, never in all the time Hanzo had been listening to him, all the time Hanzo had been watching him, wondering why he was so interested in this outlander with the odd hat and the stupid belt buckle. The sweet, genuine smile and the soft, direct gaze. He'd never seemed breakable until this moment.

Hanzo struggled to get one hand free from the serape, reached up and touched McCree's cheek, stroking down to tip McCree's face towards Hanzo's.

McCree breathed in, sharp and hot and the edge of his mouth was against Hanzo's cheek and Hanzo didn't know what he was doing anymore, didn't know why he had to tip his head and push a bloody kiss into McCree's mouth.

Harsh light, and shrieking metal on stone made both of them start as violently as if cold water had been dumped on them. Hanzo flinched back and McCree's body tensed around him, closing over him protectively.

"Take them both," a voice ordered.

And McCree snarled, "Don't you touch him," as his arms tightened painfully hard around Hanzo.

Hanzo clung stupidly to McCree, dazed and lightheaded and weak as the serape was jerked off of them and the cold crashed into him like a falling wall. They tore McCree up and yanked Hanzo away and shoved him cursing and gasping in pain to the door.

Behind him, McCree was on his feet snarling and yelling and if he'd been a compliant prisoner before, he wasn't now. He was bigger than most people thought he was and stronger then anyone took him for and for a polite, gentle, easy going man, McCree’s anger was ugly and savage. He was standing huge in the darkness of their cell, and one of the three people fighting to hold him fell back cursing and cradling their face as Hanzo watched. Blood hit the floor and spattered and Hanzo heard a bone break. Someone screamed and it wasn’t McCree.

Hanzo felt a shot of pride that twitched the edges of this lips up. He could hear Genji's voice in his head again.  _ The belt buckle he earned _ .

Pain, abrupt and consuming, shot up Hanzo's arm and he tried to gasp, but couldn't draw enough breath to make a sound. The growing scrum around McCree was getting ugly. Blood was splashing from somewhere and Hanzo saw someone's tooth hit the floor with the cool detachment of impending shock.

Then something broke and crunched and  _ twisted  _ in his wrist and Hanzo gasped and screamed until he couldn't hear himself anymore.

"Hanzo!"

McCree's voice, and suddenly the half furious, half terrified people fighting to subdue McCree rose and crushed him down as McCree abruptly stopped fighting them.

The pain in his wrist and hand was blinding, so sickening it felt like it couldn't all be for him. It couldn't all be because of such a simple thing, his wrist had be whole and strong and painless a moment ago. Something so essential couldn't be broken so easily. 

But the dragons knew better. They were trapped and furious in their tattoo and roared and twisted and shone out of his skin in terrified desperation. Their panic and pain and anger was too much. They bullied Hanzo down until he couldn't feel anything. Until the blackness eating at the edges of his vision rose up all at once and swallowed him. Until he couldn't hear McCree screaming for him.

The world dropped out from under him, and Hanzo hoped McCree wouldn't die here.

"Give him a healthpack, he's not dead yet."

The voice was rough, english shot with some muddy bastard mash of accents.  Hanzo jerked abruptly back into consciousness when someone dropped a vial on him and breathed what felt like the first breath after drowning. He was on his knees, bent double with his broken wrist lying in his lap, his other hand twisted up behind him in an arm lock that wasn't quite painful yet. He was only marginally better off then he had been before his wrist had been broken, but his head was clearer now, and the dragons were quieter.

They'd been moved. McCree and Hanzo were in a wide, airy room with one high, bare wall on one side and floor to ceiling windows on the other. They were looking down over the snow covered valley with the burned out ghost town just visible on one edge. That huge wall on his left had a cliff of water held in place by decades old cement. And they were surrounded by twenty people with military grade armor and ordnance who knew how to break bones very easily.

"Hanzo," McCree's voice, half panic and mostly furious, startled Hanzo out of his thoughts.

Hanzo blinked and looked up. McCree was on his knees in front of him, but held up, a man on either side of him, holding his arms. One of them had a hand fisted in his hair, forcing him to look down at Hanzo.

"I'm alright," Hanzo muttered in Japanese. He didn't know if McCree could understand him, but the words, or maybe the tone, made some of the tension drop out of McCree's body.

"Now then, if you're gonna quit squawkin' about this archer, we can talk. Jesse McCree. Boy from the wanted posters, big bounty on your head. Been wanting to meet you, hell I nearly got to buy you a few weeks back from a nice little operation in South America. You can call me Leeshy.” 

Apparently the leader of their captors was a talker. Hanzo would have paid him in cash to shut the hell up.

“Now,” Leeshy went on, “We're looking for some folks that you might know, I'm sure you learned that from the rounds of friendly questioning you’ve been undergoing, but my friends here tell me you haven't been so helpful."

A boot connected with Hanzo's knee. It hardly registered among the variety of other pains.

"Seems like you've got quite a gift for talking in circles when we ask you questions. But It don't take a blind man to see you got a soft spot this one, and he climbed a mountain on his own to get here, to get to you apparently. So I take it you boys are friends. Now he doesn't have a bounty on his head. We don't need to keep him, if you get my meaning." The talker went on, watching McCree.

Hanzo watched McCree nod, once.

"Right, So we're lookin’ for something called a Junkrat, we're looking for something else called a Roadhog, and once we get them we'll have a full set of internationally wanted criminals. With a polite sum of bounty to call our very own."

"Think having a bounty makes it so we all know where we are or something?" McCree growled. "I work on the side with Junkrat and Roadhog, I told your friends here days ago. But as I told them then, we don't keep tabs on one another. I don't know where they are anymore then you."

"Sure. Pull him up a little," The talker's voice changed as he turned from McCree back to Hanzo.

A hand fisted in Hanzo's hair and jerked him up until he was sitting up on his knees, looking straight up at McCree. Hanzo's jaw clenched as his broken ribs ached, his right hand was broken and useless on his lap, his wrist swelling hot under the cuff of his armour. 

Leeshy stooped, picked up Hanzo's broken hand and yanked up, tucked it firmly under his arm, and held Hanzo's broken wrist with his left hand.

The agony of the grip nearly made Hanzo scream, but he bit it back, bit the pain down, and then felt his gut go cold when he heard the  _ shk  _ of a knife snapping open.

"How's your history McCree? You know the English Longbow men revolutionized war in Europe? 7,000 longbowmen and 1,500 men at arms shattered the much greater French forces at Agniourt in 1415. The English said that if the French captured a longbow man, they wouldn't need to kill him, just make sure he'd never draw a bowstring again.  This was long time ago, long, long time, but I've seen this archer shoot and boy, I don't need to kill him, just take him out of the fight. You get me?"

Hanzo couldn't move. The hand fisted in his hair tightened, forcing him to look up at McCree. Shockingly cold on his hot skin, the point of a knife suddenly slid against the skin of his palm, up to the base of his first finger, then drove down until it hit bone. Hanzo's breath caught, his body jerking, then the knife slid sideways, off the edge of bone and stopped; poised over the joint at the first knuckle of his first finger.

When Hanzo was able to see again, McCree had gone ashen. Hanzo could see white all around his eyes.

"I know they got all kinds of fancy science these days, make him a cool new hand, just like yours, but we both know they don't got the same finesse as the real thing do they," Leeshy purred.

He had a grip like a wolf bite. The pain was hardly there in Hanzo's head anymore. The roaring, hideous, knowledge of what was going to happen, what had to happen here, was far worse. The understanding felt slick inside his head, something cold and amorphous he didn't want to touch or look at. He'd trained for most of his life as an archer, ever since he'd given up his sword. He felt cold sweat pick it's way down the edge of his face and he tried to swallow, his mouth was dry, with damning fear clawing at his throat like bile.

He didn't have time left to gain the same proficiency with a prosthetic. He wouldn't be useful to Overwatch without his weapon. Couldn't stay with Genji and McCree if he wasn't useful.

McCree wasn't going to get Junkrat or Roadhog killed.

"Now, I know you know this archer, we found him alone in the snow in the burned out town on a mission and no goddamn fear in him when we finally took him down. We figured he was coming for you. And you sure got pretty invested in him when we dumped him in your cell, didn't you. Didn't know you could fight, McCree. You'd been so placid until you got a friend. So now then, how many fingers you think your friend can loose before you start seeing things our..."

"They're both here," McCree said flatly.

"What's that?" Leeshy said.

"What's that?" Hanzo said, startled and in Japanese. He blinked up through his hair in flat astonishment.

McCree didn't look at him, he was watching Leeshy with the bright, hard stare Hanzo had only ever seen when he was about to declare high noon and kill seven people with a six shooter. There was a point of red in his right eye. 

He wasn't armed, wasn't armoured, but Hanzo abruptly went very still.

"We don't just work on the side, all of us, him included," McCree tipped his head towards Hanzo without taking his eyes off Leeshy. "We're part of the same organization, and we work together every goddamn day. They know we're both here, and as long as they know we're alive, they're going to come for us."

"Well, that makes life simple," Leeshy seemed to relax slightly, and the knife settled on the edge of Hanzo's first knuckle twisted back and forth, almost thoughtfully.

Hanzo hissed, shutting his eyes.

"Only if we're alive," McCree's voice cracked out. "You hurt him and I swear, I'll give you good reason to kill me. Then your bounty’s down to half, if you make it out alive."

"Make what out alive," Leeshy sounded amused.

"You know what Junkrat and Roadhog do?" McCree asked bluntly, his teeth were showing as he talked, each word snarled out. "Because the only thing keeping it from happening to you, is proximity to us."

Leeshy seemed to consider this, and then Hanzo barked as his wrist was abruptly dropped. The knife slipped carelessly away from his hand, slicing briefly over his palm.

"Alright, get ready,” Leeshy dropped his polite, sweet tone now that he’d made up his mind. He was snarling orders now, “We can assume they're coming to us. You four, get me some traps, right now."

People started moving, a few left the room and Hanzo waited for whatever McCree had planned, whatever answer or danger he knew about that Hanzo didn't to go off, shred these people and their plans and save them both. McCree wouldn't give up two of Overwatch, not over Hanzo, not over anything. He had been here for days, he hadn't given them up in all that time, he wasn't going to now. McCree blinked, the tension went out of him. The tiny red skull was gone.

Nothing happened. The two people holding Hanzo in place dropped him, as though losing interest, and McCree was dropped likewise.

"How could you do that," Hanzo snarled in japanese, cradling his broken wrist and bloody hand with his head down.

"Had to," McCree murmured in English. He was sitting back on his knees with three people still flanking him. "Had to Hanzo."

"Put McCree back in the hole, put the spare out back and let him go," Leeshy said over his shoulder, he was already leaving, "If Junkrat and Roadhog and whatever mercs they brought are here, they might get here faster if they know where to look for McCree." 

Hanzo had no weapon and a broken wrist and and no way to answer them when three armed people reached down for him. He hissed in pain and turned, already knowing he couldn't do anything, already feeling helpless and worthless as he was picked up, and McCree was gripped by two other guards.

"Hanzo," McCree started, watching him with some horrible, aching, hollowed out desperation that caught the breath in Hanzo's throat. "Hanzo I'm sorry."

Hanzo couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and before he could move or fight a door closed between them, and he was being carried through the dark stone hallway under the lake. Two people dragging him, and Leeshy walking ahead of them tapping into the glowing screen of a tablet.

"I'm not risking this archer coming back for McCree. He's already killed three of us over the goddamn cowboy and McCree’s killed two just now over him. Get him outside and kill him," Leeshy muttered, not looking up. "Throw him in the lake when you're done."

Hanzo snarled with a sudden, visceral rage that superseded all rational thought. He was being half dragged, half carried down a hallway leaving a trail of blood and McCree wasn't going to know what happened to him, wouldn't see him die alone in the snow beside the lake. Years of his running, his traveling, his training, his quest and his finally,  _ finally _ , finding a home and people to care for and he was going to die broken and unarmed and helpless and McCree might never know.

McCree might die thinking he'd saved Hanzo.

That thought more than the others shook him, forced his breath out in a snarl and then he was fighting with a strength the dragons lent him. He could feel them, fighting to get out, fighting to keep the pain away, fighting to mend his ribs and his wrist and the cuts and tears across his skin and it wasn't enough.

"Sure," One of the two dragging Hanzo grunted and barked in pain as Hanzo slammed an elbow in his gut. "Sure boss." He cracked Hanzo a low, viscous punch into his broken ribs.

Leeshy turned left down another corridor and Hanzo was dragged right and hauled up a short flight of worn steps and out a metal door that creaked and howled as it grated on frozen hinges.

One of his handlers had a broken nose now, and the other couldn't get Hanzo's left hand off his throat. Hanzo was snarling curses in every language he knew and it wasn't going to be enough. One of the two men reared up to back hand Hanzo down and Hanzo turned and caught the back of his wrist in his teeth and bit down until he tasted blood.

"Fuck," his guard snarled as his other handler shrieked. 

There was blood on Hanzo’s mouth and down his chin and it wasn't enough. He spat blood and scraps of skin onto the trampled snow and bared his teeth again. 

They were out in the brilliant white world. The dam was perched on the edge of the lake over the valley, and the snow and fir trees spilled away down the hillside on the left, cut down the middle by the narrow line of a waterfall made from the dam run off. On their right, the flat black water of the lake was perfectly still, with the grey and white blooms of ice floating peacefully across it.

Hanzo's ragged, panting breaths were white in the cold air. He was going to die here, and freeze in that black water. The pride and folly of the Shimada clan in the dark water pinned and rotting against the run off grate of a disused dam.

Should have stayed with the group. Should have talked to Genji before he left Gibraltar this time. Should have told McCree...

Should have kissed McCree before today. Really kissed him, like he'd wanted to since they'd met. He should have kissed McCree a long time ago.

The fury that came out in the roar he made wasn't human, it came straight from the dragons who needed to get out and simply couldn't. A hand closed on Hanzo's bare shoulder and shoved him down into the snow, and heat from the dragons flashed through Hanzo. Another scream and the guard yanked his hand away as though it'd been seared. One of his handlers staggered away from him, bleeding and cursing and clutching one hand to his chest. He took one more unsteady step, and backed into a disturbed patch of snow that looked somehow familiar.

Everything stopped for one breathless, frozen moment. Hanzo realized, with a reaction that caught him at the throat, that there was a ring of metal teeth in the snow.

The guard was poised over it, one foot in the air, backing slightly, fumbling a pistol out of the back of his belt, cherishing a bloody, seared hand and swearing. Just a little further. Hanzo held his breath.

Hanzo watched the teeth of the bear trap spring up from the snow and snap shut around the backing guard's leg as he put his foot down into it.

"Watch your step!" 

The cheery call was much too late and it had never been meant as a warning in any case. The guard screamed and staggered as his partner, cherishing a wrist with a mouthful missing, looked around wildly with confusion and unbridled terror.

Hanzo looked up, because Junkrat loved a vantage point, just in time to see a familiar land mine sail past him. Junkrat was perched on a ridge of old stonework above the door they’d come out, with Pharah standing as tall and intimidating as a obelisk behind him. Hanzo had been dragged out of the dam right underneath them and hadn't noticed either of them

Junkrat's wild gaze found Hanzo and he raised his left hand in a wave, wiggling his fingers around the detonator. "G'day!"

Hanzo felt the tension leave him. He was kneeling with a broken wrist between three armed hostiles near death and with a landmine sitting in the snow about as close as his dinner was typically served to him, and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. He waved back with his left hand.

Roadhog's hook closed around him the next moment, and yanked. Hanzo had a brief, horrible vision of the black water and white ice of the lake zipping under him, as cold wind knifed through his hair, then he fetched up against Roadhog belly and Junkrat hooted with laughter across the lake.  The opposite shore erupted with explosions.

"You have no self sustain," Mercy scolded. She was already standing beside him, her staff's beam trained on him and looking at his shattered wrist with a scowl. "Or self restraint. You shouldn't overextend where I can't follow you."

"I know," Hanzo struggled to stay on his feet. Roadhog patted one huge hand on his shoulder as he passed him, already making his unhurried way around the curve of the lake to join Junkrat. The feel of Mercy’s staff and the comfort of being surrounded by people who wanted him alive instead of dead was enough that Hanzo could have wept if he thought they had the time. 

"Roadhog, they're bounty hunters, want you and Junkrat," Hanzo heard himself say that with more urgency then he realized. He looked up to Mercy and Soldier. "McCree's in there, still alive. They know we're coming."

Roadhog grunted his thanks and didn't break stride, he was going to Junkrat as everyone knew he would. He'd go to Junkrat if it meant tearing the dam apart to reach him.

"Well there's no point in subtlety or subterfuge is there," Soldier looked wryly across the lake at Junkrat and Pharah. They were side by side at the entryway were Hanzo had been dragged out, both firing happily into the corridor. Because of course, one thing that Pharah and Junkrat loved more than a vantage point was a long narrow corridor with multiple targets. Hanzo could relate. People were screaming inside and there was a few brief hales of returning gunfire that neither Pharah or Junkrat seemed to mind much.

"How do they know we're coming?" Soldier asked. He had a gift, or more likely just the training, to ask questions that Hanzo really, really didn't want to answer.

"I told them," Hanzo growled, his attention snapping from Junkrat and Pharah merrily blasting away at a corridor of bewildered and angry bounty hunters and into Soldier. "My wrist..."

"Someone tried to cut your fingers off," Mercy said with an interest Hanzo found more than slightly disconcerting. Mercy's Caduceus technology was indistinguishable from magic at this point and it was hardly a comforting thought. "Or they were ready to."

"You told them huh?" Soldier was holding his rifle one handed up over his shoulder, and casually dropped it into both hands.

"Yes," Hanzo snapped.

"The hell you did." Soldier snorted and started walking after Roadhog, passing Hanzo, "McCree's got training to withstanding torture and I'm willing to bet you do too. But that boy's got a pretty damn obvious soft target that’s five foot and some tall with tattoos and broken bones. McCree wouldn't have stood a chance."

"He does not have a soft..." Hanzo started, furious because for a blind old man Soldier had a razor fine perception and about as much of a soft touch as one when sharing his thoughts. "I'm not..."

"Take your damn bow and let’s move it out," Soldier called back. “Don’t leave your team like that again Hanzo.” 

"Any pain?" Mercy asked before Hanzo could snap at Soldier again. She was holding his broken wrist in one hand, keeping her staff trained on him.

"No," Hanzo blinked, he hadn't realized it happening, Mercy working seamlessly on him until he could draw breath without his shattered ribs complaining. He closed his right hand into a fist and the bones and muscle responded perfectly. He was clear headed and felt bright and alert again. "Thank you."

"Understood," Mercy smiled, tipped her staff up, and her wings flared as she jumped to soar over the lake and joined Pharah. 

Hanzo watched five dangerous, misfit people all attacking a fortified area without hesitation over one of their own. He could stay with this group, they were going to stay with him after all.

Storm Bow was hooked over a broken tree branch beside where Solider had been standing, his quiver hanging beside it. He'd thought he was never going to see them again and now he took them with the aching sort of reverence reserved for receiving holy writ or committing regicide.

He started back around the lake, notching a sonic arrow to the string and drawing it, and felt his wrist and the muscles in his hand and arm and over his chest move exactly as he wanted them to. He shot the sonic arrow into the heart of the gathering melee at the entrance, and four figures in red lit up inside the corridor.

"There's a room with windows on the hillside edge, around the front of the dam," Hanzo called to Soldier as he found a vantage point and shot into the corridor. One of the four flickering images of the bounty hunters faded abruptly to white as it fell. "Central, and crowded."

"You don't say," Soldier was standing a little before Junkrat, firing into the corridor with professional detachment, and helping to dispatch anyone unlucky enough to be grabbed by Roadhog's hook. He and Junkrat were sharing the golden pool of his biotic field. "Pharah, Mercy, flank right side, Roadhog, take us inside." The golden circle of the biotic field snapped off, Roadhog stepped directly into the line of fire coming out of the open door, ignored all the damage and dumped a handful of scrap into his gun.

Hanzo watched with something between amazement and amusement as Roadhog went Whole Hog, and calmly began walking down the corridor, spraying random scrap at lethal velocity and without any consideration for his own well being. Junkrat and Soldier followed close behind him, leaning out on occasion to fire into the retreating, dying bounty hunters left after Roadhogs initial attack.

"Once we're inside do you know your way around?" Soldier called back to Hanzo.

"Follow the blood trail," Hanzo replied, thinking of the blood he'd watched stretching out behind him as he was dragged around.

Junkrat giggled beside him, "You think you could be more specific mate?"

Hanzo looked at him, and they maintained steady eye contact as they picked their way over two bloody bodies in Roadhogs wake. The entire corridor was spattered with blood. It was slick underfoot.

"Point taken," Hanzo conceded.

Roadhog grunted as the last of his scrap ran out. He pulled the handle from his gun and returned it to his pocket for safe keeping, and switched back to his hook.

"This way," Hanzo turned right, remembering the split before he'd been taken outside. They ran along, Roadhog in the rear, watching their backs, filling the hallway in case of attack from behind them, and Soldier running in front.

They crashed into the huge room where Hanzo had nearly lost his first two fingers, and where McCree had broken to torture he didn't suffer from.

It had undergone a drastic change in the minutes since Hanzo had left it. Now it was as cold as the outdoors, and the floor was scorched by rocket fire and covered in huge shards of shattered glass. There were six armed men taking cover from the broken windows, their backs to the door.

Soldier and Hanzo moved in perfect time, rifle drawing up to Soldier's shoulder, Hanzo pulling his right hand back with the weight of a full draw on it. They fired, two bounty hunters died and the four still living jerked upright, looking away from the windows and firing wildly back towards them.

Soldier slammed his biotic field down and Hanzo caught a bullet high on his right cheek that glanced past him, splitting his ear and tearing through his hair. He drew back the string of the bow again, the pain already numb, insignificant and healing, and killed another bounty hunter.

There was a roar of jump jets, and Pharah was suddenly hovering outside, framed in the big window with her rocket launcher coolly poised. The golden trail of Mercy’s Caduceus staff turned blue and Pharah fired. The rocket landed between the last two men, and they died before she needed to fire again. 

Soldier greeted her as she flew in, and Mercy, hovering out of sight and out of harm's way above her, drifted down and flew in to Hanzo to heal the last of the damage he'd taken.

"Where were they keeping him?" Soldier turned to Hanzo.

Hanzo was already turning, searching the bloody, scorched, glass shattered floor for a blood trail. He'd been unconscious when they'd dragged him in here, there had to be a trail back to where they had held him, where they were keeping McCree.

"This wall's weight bearing," Junkrat remarked.

Hanzo froze. His attention shifted to Junkrat like iron filings pulled towards a magnet.

Junkrat was standing with his head cocked, looking up at the huge, damp cement wall. Nobody moved.

Then Roadhog grunted in agreement. There was about forty five vertical feet of water behind that wall. A dammed lake that extended more than a kilometer back up the course of the river.

"It's gotta stay that way for just a little longer," Soldier said carefully. "Roadhog, Junkrat, rig this wall up, the valley under us still has the old lake bed and no one around for miles. Mercy, go with Hanzo before he goes off alone, Pharah and I will stay here, draw fire and cover these two. Rendezvous at the drop ship, we'll follow once you have McCree safe. Let’s move."

Hanzo was already going, and he felt the pinch between his shoulders that meant Mercy had flown to him, and was running behind.

"Remember what I said about self sustain," She said serenely as she locked onto him with a damage boost. It always made him feel like his muscles and bones were too hot for his skin, like he'd never run out of breath, or ever grow tired. Full draw on his bow felt light when she damage boosted him like this.

There was blood and broken glass all over the floor, but Hanzo crashed through the only door that had drag marks going both ways, and Mercy flew unhesitatingly after him.

There were four people in the corridor behind it, all running towards him with rifles in their hands and muffled shouting coming from their headsets. They saw Hanzo and instantly fixated. Mercy immediately stepped back around the corner out of line of sight.

A narrow hallway and four hostiles.

"Scatter," Hanzo drew back and fired low, a scatter shot hitting the floor at the feet of the first of the armed bounty hunter just swinging his rifle up. The ricochet tore him apart, and Hanzo didn't break stride as he ran towards the ongoing storm of arrow shards and the three remaining bounty hunters caught inside it.

At least one was going to survive and Hanzo drew another arrow back and fired it into her chest before she could recover. He jumped the body of the first hunter and past the second as they fell against the wall and slid to the floor. He caught three bullets high across his shoulder and it barely knocked him to the side. Mercy was tucked behind him now, already healing the damage until it was meaningless. In a reaction that owed nothing to conscious thought, Hanzo drew one more arrow back and fired it into the face of the last hunter, already dying with arrow fragments in her chest but with her rifle pulled tight to her shoulder and aiming up at him with a remarkably steady hand.  

He ran past the last bounty hunter as he fell back and died, turned right to follow a fresh scratch on the cracked concrete, jumped down a short flight of stairs and landed hard on wet stone. Mercy glided cautiously down after him and once they saw the hallway was empty, she shot after him as he ran ahead. Hanzo couldn't see the blood on the wet floor, but one of the doors along this low tunnel had a bloody handprint streaked across it. His handprint, and he skidded to a stop so quickly that Mercy, gliding after him and catching up, slammed into his back with a startled grunt.

"So, must be this one?" She asked after swearing in quiet german. She spread her wings again after having crumpled them on impact with Hanzo.

Hanzo nodded, suddenly brought up short by something that haddn't occurred to him. He didn't have the key. He had no idea where the keys to this miserable hole would  _ be  _ and that lock looked upsettingly new--

His thoughts derailed when Mercy drew her pistol without hesitation and began firing into the hinges.

Hanzo watched her with his mouth slightly open and without speaking. Silently he slung Storm Bow across his shoulders.

"Give that a try," Mercy held her pistol up, letting the cylinder spin up as it reloaded.

The door, old metal left underground to rust under a lake, broke in with a crash when Hanzo slammed against it. A new lock did not make up for old hinges which had never seen maintenance of any kind. And frankly nothing could have stood against eighteen shots fired at point blank range by a wrathful field medic with a practical grasp of her hippocratic oath.

"Hanzo!"

McCree was sitting against the wall, knees tucked to his chest, wrapped in his serape, looking small with blood on his face. He looked up at Hanzo with stark, hungry relief and something else in that expression which shattered whatever was left in Hanzo that held his composure above McCree.

The dragons in his tattoo were burning hot and sharp and eager under his skin as Hanzo held the broken door across his arm without noticing the weight. He threw it to one side and stepped over it to McCree, reaching down to him and got a fist full of the red serape and flannel shirt and dragged him up and forwards until McCree was on his feet.

"McCree," Hanzo whispered. Smoke and sage and blood and wool and McCree's arms were already reaching around him, wrapping him up and pulling him in and Hanzo sighed and shuddered and dragged himself against McCree with both hands fisted in the familiar serape.

"You're ok," McCree's voice was shaking, "You got me."

Hanzo couldn't speak, he could hardly breath. His heart was beating fast and hard and he felt hot and slightly weak from relief and it was warm down here in the cold with McCree's arms around him. He reached up blindly, barely managing to force himself  to ease his grip on the serape, and cupped McCree's face. Hanzo felt McCree's breath hitch, and he didn't notice that he was already moving, turning his head and pulling McCree down to meet him.

They kissed in the dark, and the cold, and there was still blood on Hanzo's mouth and they were both shaking and McCree was clinging to Hanzo like it was all that was keeping him upright. Hanzo just pushed himself up into the kiss and harder against McCree's body and burned through the last of his shred of his composure for the feel of McCree's mouth on his because this was always going to be more important. McCree was here and he was his and Hanzo was always going to come and get him and McCree had to know that too.

Hanzo slipped his hands down a little, cupping the back of McCree's neck, and pulled back just slightly, gasping in a breath that shook him because he'd never felt this weak.

"No," McCree murmured, he slipped one hand up into Hanzo's hair, under the band of his ponytail and tugged Hanzo up again and leaned down. "More, Hanzo," His talked through his teeth as he bit Hanzo's lip, "come on Hanzo please."

They were in a dam under a lake with two worryingly proficient demolitions experts rigging the entire place to be sent straight to hell and Hanzo just made a tiny, aching little moan and leaned back up into McCree with his mouth open. McCree's hand tightened in his hair for a second, and then relaxed, tension shuddering out of him as he wrapped himself around Hanzo and kissed him hard.

There was a shout from behind them and Mercy's pistol fired twice. Something heavy hit the ground.

Hanzo had his eyes closed and his mouth open and McCree's mouth was hot and eager as McCree sucked on his tongue This time when they broke the kiss they were both panting and they were pressed together all the way down. They stood still for a moment, the shock of the last few seconds almost overwhelming, but also horribly, unfairly, not enough.

"Nice," McCree murmured, he still had one hand in Hanzo's hair and the other pressed into Hanzo's back, keeping them close. McCree took a slow breath and blinked down at Hanzo.

Hanzo just nodded, he was leaning up against McCree and his hands were steady and gentle on McCree's shoulders. He found himself smiling.  

McCree was studying his face with quiet, absolutely unfeigned delight from under the brim of his hat. "You got me," McCree said again, softer this time, but it didn't have quite the same meaning.

"Of course I do," Hanzo replied, closing his eyes.

"In your own time," Mercy said. She was standing at the torn open door to McCree's cell with her pistol in her hands looking back up the way they'd come. There was a body at her feet.

"Thanks doc," McCree seemed to shake himself, remember where he was after he managed to tear his eyes off Hanzo. "Guess we oughta get a move on."

"No rush," Mercy said serenely, she stepped aside to let McCree out and then Hanzo, flipping her staff into her hands and healing what little damage McCree had taken. "Soldier and I assumed this part of the mission might take a little longer."

"Oh, did you now?" McCree said, and Hanzo looked at Mercy in mute, disgruntled astonishment. They rounded a corner and McCree stepped adroitly out of the way for Hanzo to meet pair of guards with armor over their pajamas. Apparently the dam was running low on personnel.

Hanzo killed one as Mercy shot the other and they ran on without breaking stride.

"We also assumed the mission to the Bolshoi, and the South America mission, and the London..."

"How long have you been assuming," Hanzo snapped, sticking close to McCree as they rounded the turn towards the huge meeting room and found no opposition. "And who?"

"For some time now," Mercy said cheerfully, "And I find myself bound by doctor patient confidentiality about who suspected you and McCree might take some extra time together."

"Torbjorn?" McCree hazarded.

"My brother?" Hanzo asked at the exact same time.

"Doctor Patient confidentiality," Said Mercy serenely. She was gliding along behind them as they ran up the slight incline and towards the main room under the huge broken windows.

"So that's why you didn't call on us when Talon attacked the ballet," McCree said. He shook his head and hopped over a few bodies left lying where Soldier and Pharah had put them down.

Hanzo spared Mercy a glare but she just smiled beatifically into it and the three of them ran into the wide open room with shattered glass and scorch marks on the floor. There was an array of explosives on the huge, damp cement wall, and both Hanzo and McCree went from a run to a sprint as they passed it.

There was blast of rocket fire and a few minor explosions accompanied by Junkrat hooting with laughter as they reached the junction up the hallway. To their left, the cold bright outside waited, and to their right, a firefight was raging between the last members of the bounty hunters and four familiar idiots with varying degrees of illegal armaments.

"How're they doing?" McCree paused as Hanzo did, both of them unwilling to go on if the others were in trouble.

"Fine," Mercy shrugged, and she would know, of course. Neither Hanzo or McCree moved, the same thought occurring to both of them.

Hanzo carefully nocked a sonic arrow and shot it down dark hallway to their right. There was one tube of fluorescent lighting about halfway to the next corner. It flickered.

The arrow hit the far wall at the turn and a few figures lit up in red, crouched in cover, one was reloading, another might have been praying.

"McCree, Hanzo," Mercy said, "Rendezvous at the drop ship. Jack and the others are fine."

"Just," McCree said slowly.

"He'll keep coming for you," Hanzo said what they had both been thinking. "He tried to buy you weeks ago. If he survives this..."

"Right." McCree said quietly.

Hanzo set his jaw and found he'd pulled his bow into half draw without thinking. "He won't."

"Right," McCree said again, but he was smiling this time.

"Dropship," Mercy said firmly, "Vendetta's need time if they aren't meant to be suicide missions." There was a note of authority in her voice that hinted at some previous experience.

They were still hesitating, but just at that moment, Soldier76 skidded around the corner into line of sight going sideways and began loping towards them with his rifle in both hands. Pharah shot after him, mid rocket boost and accelerating, and behind her Junkrat came around the corner hopping on his peg leg and howling with laughter. Bringing up the rear, Roadhog totally filled the tunnel and began running with the dedicated drive of a tidal wave.

"Time to move," Soldier76 shot past McCree and Hanzo and when they turned, found that Mercy was already out of sight. Apparently when Mercy saw Soldier sprinting  _ away  _ from a firefight she just tried to keep up.

"He's not wrong! Let’s move out," Pharah hit the ground running after her booster jump and it barely slowed her down. She passed McCree and Hanzo who turned to watch Junkrat and Roadhog loping towards them. Junkrat was grinning.

"Might not even need the rig!" Junkrat called, waving his detonator at them, "Someone's set the place off before we could!"

Roadhog wasn't actually running anymore. He was, in fact, being rocketed towards them by a wall of water. An actual,  _ literal  _ tidal wave of foaming water coming at them with marginally sublethal force with Roadhog filling the hallway like a cork coming out of a bottle of champagne. 

McCree reached for Hanzo just as Hanzo reached out for him and they were holding on to one another by the time Roadhog, with Junkrat coiled up laughing on one shoulder, slammed into them with great force and at high velocity, and the four of them were shot up the hallway, up the short flight of steps and out the door. Later Hanzo learned that Pharah had been holding the door open for them, which saved them from becoming a paste diluted with millions of gallons of glacial runoff. He thanked her formally for it.

The blast of the water threw them out and slightly up before they landed in the snow among the rocks of the mountainside, fought to sit up and were slammed back down by the spray from the door behind them. They were going to be washed down the mountain at this rate, water was pouring down on them so hard and fast they couldn't breath and the weight was increasing. They all four slipped in increments down the hillside towards the drop off, and Hanzo fetched up against the side of a boulder with his arms around McCree. They were still together, and they weren't going anywhere apart. Water was pouring over and past them, chunks of snow rushing by in the torrent, and McCree just put his head down over Hanzo and they clung together in the freezing onslaught.

From the chaos, Hanzo just managed to peek over McCree's shoulder and saw Junkrat's hand raise, straight up in the air, like he was asking a question in lecture. He had his detonator in one hand. His pinky was held out politely, and there was a little orange light glowing in the pouring water.

Junkrat put his thumb down.

For a second, nothing happened, and then the entire front face of the dam exploded outward in an expanding wall of glass and concrete and white water.  The frothing mass went rushing up and out and fell free and joyfully down it's old watercourse, bowling house sized chunks of the old dam along with it. The noise of the explosion was so enormous that Hanzo couldn't hear himself scream, and wasn't sure if anyone else was either.

The torrent of water spraying out at them from the only passage the water had found out, slacked as the pressure from the dam went down hill past them about about 120km/h for several minutes. Hanzo sat up with McCree, soaked and coughing up freezing water and breathless but alive and whole. They were still together, and the boulder Hanzo had fetched up against was the last one before the hillside plunged away in a rocky, miserable drop. Junkrat had fetched up on the boulder made up of Roadhog, who was sitting up and patting Junkrat, who was hugging him in joyful relief and excitement.

Soldier and Mercy stuck their heads out from the cover of the trees and Pharah came cautiously down from what looked like near orbit. Mercy hopped, then flew forward towards Roadhog, healing him before switching to Junkrat and then making her way over to Hanzo and McCree.

She did not tell them  _ I told you so _ , she also totally, and emphatically, refrained from reminding them to  _ stick with the group, you miserable, flanking fatheads _ . She said neither of these things very loudly as they walked back up the hillside to the rapidly draining lake. The whole area was scoured of snow, dirt and plant life from the jet engine velocity of the water spraying out the door. The roar of water from the dam was easing, as the pressure from the trapped water had slacked off, and the eighty foot wide torrent had shrunk to a more recognizable fifteen feet of white water. The old lake bed in the valley below them was filling up rapidly.

Hanzo and McCree were soaked and freezing, shivering as they walked and Hanzo sighed with relief as McCree wrung his serape out and hung it across both their shoulders to share. Junkrat's teeth were chattering before they were halfway to the ship, and Roadhog carried him, cradled in his arms, the rest of the way. Roadhog seemed immune to the cold.

"It was their leader," Soldier explained as the close the last few feet to the drop ship as it sat huge and safe on a crest of bare snow between the trees. "He shut the gates for the run off and let the lake fill up behind the dam. Then blew open a hole upstream of us. Filled the room and killed the last of his crew. We got a door shut between us and the water but that didn't last."

Hanzo and McCree nodded miserably, still shivering, as Mercy punched in an authorization code to the drop ship and the huge door swung open and down to let them drag themselves up the ramp and into the blessedly warm, dry ship. 

Hanzo and McCree immediately went to their lockers, dragging their sodden clothes off while Pharah, Mercy and Roadhog made their way up to the cockpit. They began pulling the ship to life and setting a course while Junkrat shook himself like a dog and spattered cold water around the cabin. 

"Killed his crew then?" McCree asked Soldier, "There was a lot of people in there, it was an operation and the bounty hunting seemed a little like a side job."

"Whatever they were doing went down the mountain," Soldier was only slightly damp from the afternoon of toying with several tons of water under pressure. He still had blood on his clothes. He was probably only damp from Junkrat. "Here, found this for you.” He pulled Peacekeeper out from inside his jacket and held it out to McCree. 

McCree whistled softly in relief. “Never thought I’d see that again. Much obliged.” 

Soldier just nodded. He seemed to understand how McCree and Hanzo felt about their respective weapons, even if he didn’t feel much more than satisfied with his rifle. “Get changed and get some rest, we'll have some leave when we're back in Gibraltar."

Hanzo nodded absently and Soldier headed to his seat, probably for a nap. Junkrat had already changed out of his soaking wet shorts and was sitting at the card table in an old pair of plus-fours and tatty white lab coat. The ship lifted serenely into the air so quietly it could almost have gone unnoticed, the three pilots up in the cockpit taking them out over the mountain. They flew over the valley and it's recently returned lake, and the ruins of the old dam, and the burnt down town where McCree had been lost a week ago.

Hanzo wrung glacier water out of his ponytail, untied his scarf and shivered as the water dripped down his shoulder. He pulled dry clothes out of his locker and gratefully began pulling them on. Beside him, McCree was fussing with a new shirt while his hat dripped from the corner of his open locker door and he stood shirtless and barefoot in dry jeans. Hanzo had forgotten he had a scar over his right hip.

"You weren't scared of falling," McCree said suddenly. He’d caught Hanzo looking and rounded on him. He looked like he'd been hit by a long mulled over revelation. "First damn time we talked after we met when you damn near fell off a cliff. You weren't scared of the fall you were starin' at me."

Hanzo scraped his mangled dignity into a pitiful little heap, but it wasn't enough to stop him from reaching out to McCree and putting one hand flat on his chest. "Yes," Hanzo said flatly. He had remembered the pierced nipple. And the way the hair covering McCree's chest couldn't quiet cover the scars, and the way it narrowed to a trail under his navel. "Yes I was staring at you."

McCree snorted, ducking his head and tipping his shoulders in, but not out of resignation this time, or ever again if Hanzo could help it, just genuine shy delight. "Well shoot, we start as we mean to go on don't we."

"Not quite." Hanzo stepped up, into McCree's space and reached up for him, "I'm not sprinting up a wall to hide behind ductwork out of panic this time."

"We make progress," McCree replied, but he was smiling, fighting down his blush and tipping his head into Hanzo's hand.

McCree kissed Hanzo with his shirt held still between them. It was quick and brief and somehow, already easy. It felt familiar in a way that shouldn't have surprised Hanzo. He was familiar with so much about McCree. They knew each other well enough that of course, this was easy.

"Thanks for coming to get me, again," McCree murmured against Hanzo's lips. They were both cold and still shivering slightly, but for the few seconds, neither of them thought of pulling away.

"Of course," Hanzo replied softly.

They left their clothes dripping on anything they could use to hang them from, and went to the warm, comfortable corner where Junkrat was already snoring softly, sprawled on the bench at the table. McCree had a green serape almost as old and worn as his red one, and he wrapped it around them both. They fell asleep with their heads tipped together, sitting side by side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, this one went a little harder than previous chapters so thanks for hanging in there! I realized at the end of it there were still a few scenes I didn't get to put in that I had been meaning to, and so hopefully I will be able to append them in an epilogue.  
> If you have any comments or requests, please let me know! Or come chat! You can find me on my [my Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com)! The next update will be the final chapter to the Roadrat Mermaid AU, and I will be flitting around with a wrench and a mean streak editing and and tweaking my existing fics for a bit. Polishing things up a little before the next endeavor!  
> Daishar beta'd this chapter and lordy-loo she's getting a love letter in the mail for all her hard work and support （￣ε￣ʃƪ）♡
> 
> A podfic by sksninja can be found [here!](https://wontyoureadtome.tumblr.com/post/174195039302/chapter-1-of-five-times-hanzo-shimada-lost-his)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Five Times Hanzo Shimada Lost His Composure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995493) by [sksNinja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sksNinja/pseuds/sksNinja)




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